49 ideas
| 15879 | The Square of Opposition has two contradictory pairs, one contrary pair, and one sub-contrary pair [Harré] |
| Full Idea: Square of Opposition: 'all A are B' and 'no A are B' are contraries; 'some A are B' and 'some A are not B' are sub-contraries; the pairs 'all A are B'/'some A are B' and 'no A are B'/'some A are B' are contradictories. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
| A reaction: [the reader may construct his own diagram from this description!] The contraries are at the extremes of contradiction, but the sub-contraries are actual compatible. You could add possible worlds to this picture. |
| 15891 | Traditional quantifiers combine ordinary language generality and ontology assumptions [Harré] |
| Full Idea: The generalising function and the ontological function of discourse are elided in the traditional quantifier. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
| A reaction: This simple point strikes me as helping enormously to disentangle the mess created by over-emphasis on formal logic in ontology, and especially in the Quinean concept of 'ontological commitment'. |
| 15878 | Some quantifiers, such as 'any', rule out any notion of order within their range [Harré] |
| Full Idea: The quantifier 'any' unambiguously rules out any presupposition of order in the members of the range of individuals quantified. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
| A reaction: He contrasts this with 'all', 'each' and 'every', which are ambiguous in this respect. |
| 15874 | Scientific properties are not observed qualities, but the dispositions which create them [Harré] |
| Full Idea: The properties of material things with which the sciences deal are not the qualities we observe them to have, but the dispositions of those things to engender the states and qualities we observe. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be the correct use of the word 'qualities', so that properties are not qualities (in the way Heil would like). |
| 14703 | Superficial necessity is true in all worlds; deep necessity is thus true, no matter which world is actual [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: If we have a 'fixedly' operator F, then a sentence is fixedly actually true if it is true no matter which world is designated as actual (which 'he actually won in 2008' fails to be). Maybe '□' is superficial necessity, and FA is 'deep' necessity. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 1.2.2) | |
| A reaction: Gareth Evans distinguishes 'deep' from 'superficial' necessity. Humberstone and others introduced 'F'. Presumably FA is deeper because it has to pass a tougher test. |
| 15884 | Laws of nature remain the same through any conditions, if the underlying mechanisms are unchanged [Harré] |
| Full Idea: A statement is a law of nature if it is true in all those worlds which differ only as to their initial conditions, that is in which the underlying mechanisms of nature are the same. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 4) | |
| A reaction: Harré takes it that laws of nature have to be necessary, by definition. I like this way of expressing natural necessity, in terms of 'mechanisms' rather than of 'laws'. Where do the mechanisms get their necessity? |
| 14714 | Contradictory claims about a necessary god both seem apriori coherent [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: It seems apriori coherent that there could be a necessarily existing god, and that there could be no such god - but they can't both be true. Other examples include unprovable mathematical necessities | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.3.4) |
| 19691 | Unlike knowledge, you can achieve understanding through luck [Grimm] |
| Full Idea: It may be that understanding is compatible with luck, in a way that knowledge is not. | |
| From: Stephen R. Grimm (Understanding [2011], 3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Kvanvig and Prichard] If so, then we cannot say that knowledge is a lesser type of understanding. If you ask a trusted person how a mechanism works, and they have a wild guess that is luckily right, you would then understand it. |
| 19690 | 'Grasping' a structure seems to be modal, because we must anticipate its behaviour [Grimm] |
| Full Idea: 'Graspng' a structure would seem to bring into play something like a modal sense or ability, not just to register how things are, but also to anticipate how certain elements of the system would behave. | |
| From: Stephen R. Grimm (Understanding [2011], 2) | |
| A reaction: In the case of the chronology of some historical events, talking of 'grasping' or 'understanding' seems wrong because the facts are static and invariant. That seems to support the present idea. But you might 'understand' a pattern if you can reproduce it. |
| 19692 | You may have 'weak' understanding, if by luck you can answer a set of 'why questions' [Grimm] |
| Full Idea: There may be a 'weak' sense of understanding, where all you need to do is to be able to answer 'why questions' successfully, where one might have come by this ability in a lucky way. | |
| From: Stephen R. Grimm (Understanding [2011], 3) | |
| A reaction: We can see this point (in Idea 19691), but the idea that one could come by true complex understanding of something by purely lucky means is a bit absurd. Surely you would get one or two why questions wrong? 100%, just by luck? |
| 14704 | 2D semantics gives us apriori knowledge of our own meanings [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: Generalized 2D semantics is meant to vindicate the traditional idea that we have apriori access to our own meanings through armchair reflection. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: The idea is to split meaning in two, so that we know one part of it a priori. It is an unfashionably internalist view of meaning (which doesn't make it wrong!). |
| 15880 | In physical sciences particular observations are ordered, but in biology only the classes are ordered [Harré] |
| Full Idea: In the physical sciences the particular observations and experimental results are usually orderable, while in the biological sciences it is the classes of organism which are ordered, not the particular organisms. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
| A reaction: Harré is interesting on the role of ordering in science. Functions can be defined by an order. Maths feeds on orderings. Physics, he notes, focuses on things which vary together. |
| 15869 | Reports of experiments eliminate the experimenter, and present results as the behaviour of nature [Harré] |
| Full Idea: In accounts of experiments, by Faraday and others, the role of the guiding hand of the actual experimenter is written out in successive accounts. The effect is to display the phenomenon as a natural occurrence, existing independently of the experiments. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
| A reaction: He records three stages in Faraday's reports. The move from active to passive voice is obviously part of it. The claim of universality is thus implicit rather than explicit. |
| 15881 | We can save laws from counter-instances by treating the latter as analytic definitions [Harré] |
| Full Idea: When we come upon a counter-instance to a generalisation we can save the putative law, by treating it as potentially analytic and claiming it as a definition. ...Thus magnetism doesn't hold for phosphorus, so we say phosphorus is not a magnetic substance. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
| A reaction: He notes this as being particularly true when the laws concern the dispositions of substances, rather than patterns of events. |
| 15882 | Since there are three different dimensions for generalising laws, no one system of logic can cover them [Harré] |
| Full Idea: Since there are three different dimensions of generality into which every law of nature is generalised, there can be no one system of logic which will govern inference to or from every law of every kind. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at the covering-law approach, which actually aims to output observations as logical inferences from laws. Wrong. |
| 15888 | The grue problem shows that natural kinds are central to science [Harré] |
| Full Idea: The grue problem illustrates the enormous importance that the concept of a natural-kind plays in real science. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
| A reaction: The point is that we took emeralds to be a natural kind, but 'grue' proposes that they aren't, since stability is the hallmark of a natural kind. |
| 15887 | 'Grue' introduces a new causal hypothesis - that emeralds can change colour [Harré] |
| Full Idea: In introducing the predicate 'grue' we also introduce an additional causal hypothesis into our chemistry and physics; namely, that when observed grue emeralds change from blue to green. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
| A reaction: [The 'when observered' is a Harré addition] I hate 'grue'. Only people who think our predicates have very little to do with reality are impressed by it. Grue is a behaviour, not a colour. |
| 15889 | It is because ravens are birds that their species and their colour might be connected [Harré] |
| Full Idea: It is because ravens are birds that it makes sense to contemplate the possibility of a lawful relation between their species and their colour. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
| A reaction: Compare the 'laws' concerning leaf colour in autumn, and the 'laws' concerning packaging colour in supermarkets. Harré's underlying point is that raven colour concerns mechanism. |
| 15890 | Non-black non-ravens just aren't part of the presuppositions of 'all ravens are black' [Harré] |
| Full Idea: Non-black non-ravens have no role to play in assessing the plausibility of 'All ravens are black' because their existence is not among the existential presuppositions of that statement. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Strawson for the 'presupposition' approach] |
| 15885 | The necessity of Newton's First Law derives from the nature of material things, not from a mechanism [Harré] |
| Full Idea: The 'must' of Newton's First Law is different. There is no deeper level relative to the processes described to give a mechanism which generates uniform motion. There is no such mechanism. ..It specifies what it is for something to be a material thing. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 4) | |
| A reaction: Harré says the law can only exist as part of a network of other ideas. |
| 15868 | Idealisation idealises all of a thing's properties, but abstraction leaves some of them out [Harré] |
| Full Idea: An 'idealisation' preserves all the properties of the source but it possesses these properties in some ideal or perfect form. ...An 'abstraction', on the other hand, lacks certain features of its source. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
| A reaction: Yet another example in contemporary philosophy of a clear understanding of the sort of abstraction which Geach and others have poured scorn on. |
| 14706 | Your view of water depends on whether you start from the actual Earth or its counterfactual Twin [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: Your verdicts about whether the stuff on Twin Earth counts as water depends on whether you think of Twin Earth as a hypothesis about your actual environment or as a purely counterfactual possibility. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.2.3) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'two-dimensional semantics' approach to the Twin Earth problem, which splits meaning into two components. Whether you start from the actual world or from Twin Earth, you will rigidly designate the local wet stuff as 'water'. |
| 14711 | Rationalists say knowing an expression is identifying its extension using an internal cognitive state [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: In rationalist views of meaning, based on the 'golden triangle', to be competent with an expression is to be in an internal cognitive state that puts one in a position to identify its extension in any possible world based only on apriori reflection. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.3.1) | |
| A reaction: This looks like a proper fight-back against modern rampant externalism about meaning. All my intuitions are with internalism, which I think points to a more coherent overall philosophy. Well done, David Chalmers! Even if he is wrong. |
| 14717 | Internalist meaning is about understanding; externalist meaning is about embedding in a situation [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: Internalists take the notion of meaning to capture an aspect of an individual's current state of understanding, while externalists take the notion of meaning to reflect how an individual is embedded within her social and physical environment. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.4.3) | |
| A reaction: This idea also occurs in discussions of concepts (filed here under 'Thought'). |
| 14720 | Semantic theory assigns meanings to expressions, and metasemantics explains how this works [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: A semantic theory assigns semantic values (meanings) to particular expressions of the language. In contrast, a metasemantic theory explains why expressions have those semantic values, appealing to facts about speakers and communities. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably some people only want the metasemantic version. I assume that the two are entangled, but I would vote for both. |
| 14695 | Semantic theories show how truth of sentences depends on rules for interpreting and joining their parts [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: Semantic theories explain how the truth or falsity of whole sentences depends on the meanings of their parts by stating rules governing the interpretation of subsentential expressions and their modes of combination. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 1.1.1) | |
| A reaction: Somehow it looks as if the mystery of the whole business will still be missing if this project is ever successfully completed. Also one suspects that such a theory would be a fiction, rather than a description of actuality, which is too complex. |
| 14696 | Simple semantics assigns extensions to names and to predicates [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: The simplest semantic frameworks assign extensions as semantic values of particular expressions. The extension of a name is the thing, of 'cool' is the set of cool things, and sets of ordered pairs for 2-place predicates. The sentence has T or F. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 1.1.1) | |
| A reaction: The immediate well-known problem is different predicates with the same extensions, such as 'renate' and 'cordate'. Possible worlds semantics is supposed to be an improvement to cover this, and to give a semantics for modal talk as well. Sounds good. |
| 14697 | 'Federer' and 'best tennis player' can't mean the same, despite having the same extension [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: A simple extensional semantics will assign the same semantic value to 'Roger Federer' and 'world's best tennis player', but they clearly differ in meaning, and if events had unfolded differently they would pick out different people. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 1.1.1) | |
| A reaction: You would think that this would be too obvious to need pointing out, but it is clearly a view that had a lot of popularity before the arrival of possible worlds. |
| 14698 | Possible worlds semantics uses 'intensions' - functions which assign extensions at each world [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: In standard possible worlds semantics, the semantic value of an expression is an 'intension', a function that assigns an extension to the expression 'at' every possible world. ...It keeps track of the 'modal profiles' of objects, kinds and properties. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 1.1.1) | |
| A reaction: Personally I just don't buy a semantics which is entirely based on extensions, even if this has sorted out some more obvious problems of extensionality. When I say someone is 'my hero', I don't just mean to pick out a particular person. |
| 14699 | Possible worlds make 'I' and that person's name synonymous, but they have different meanings [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: In standard possible worlds semantics the semantic value of Hllary Clinton's utterance of 'I' will be the same as her utterance of 'Hillary Clinton'. But clearly the English word 'I' is not synonymous with the name 'Hillary Clinton'. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 1.1.1) | |
| A reaction: This problem was spotted by Kaplan, and it has been a chief motivator for the creation of two-dimensional semantics, which some people have then extended into a complete semantic theory. No purely extensional semantics can be right. |
| 14709 | Possible worlds semantics implies a constitutive connection between meanings and modal claims [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: In standard possible world semantics an expression's intension reflects the modal profile of an object, kind or property, which would establish an important constitutive connection between meanings and modal claims. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.3.1) | |
| A reaction: The central question becomes 'do you need to know a thing's modal profile in order to have a decent understanding of it?', but if you express it that way (my way), then what counts as 'decent' will be relative to all sorts of things. |
| 14719 | In the possible worlds account all necessary truths are same (because they all map to the True) [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: A problem for a standard possible worlds analysis is that all necessary truths have precisely the same content (the function mapping every world to the True). Hesperus=Phosphorus has the same content as Hesperus=Hesperus-and-2+2=4. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: If this is supposed to be a theory of meaning then it has gone very badly wrong indeed. Has modern semantics taken a wrong turning somewhere? Two-dimensionalism is meant to address some of these problems. |
| 14701 | Array worlds along the horizontal, and contexts (world,person,time) along the vertical [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: In a two-dimensional matrix we array possible circumstances of evaluation (worlds) along the horizontal axis, and possible contexts of utterance (world, person, time) along the vertical axis. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 1.1.2) | |
| A reaction: This is due to Stalnaker 1978, and is clearest in operation when applied to an indexical such as 'I' in 'I am President'. 'I' is a rigid designator, but depends on context. The grid is filled in with T or F for each utterance in each world. |
| 14702 | If we introduce 'actually' into modal talk, we need possible worlds twice to express this [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: At first glance necessity and possibility can be fully expressed by quantifying over all possible worlds, but this cannot capture 'Possibly everything actually red is also shiny'. This needs a double-indexed framework, with worlds playing two roles. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 1.2.1) | |
| A reaction: She points out that this also applies to tense logic, for the notion of 'now'. The point is that we not only need a set of possible worlds, but we also need a procedure (the 'Actuality' operator A or @) for picking out one of the worlds as special. |
| 14705 | Do we know apriori how we refer to names and natural kinds, but their modal profiles only a posteriori? [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps our best way of understanding names and natural kind terms is that we have apriori access to currently associated reference-fixing criterion, but only a posteriori access to the associated modal profile. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'generalized' view of 2D semantics (covering everything, not just modals and indexicals). I know apriori what something is, but only study will reveal its possibilities. The actual world is easy to talk about, but possible worlds are harder. |
| 14715 | 2D fans defend it for conceptual analysis, for meaning, and for internalist reference [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: Supporters of generalized two-dimensional semantics agree to defend apriori conceptual analysis in metaphysics, and that 2D captures meaning and not just belief-patterns, and it gives a broadly internalist approach to reference determination. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.3.4) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I can evaluate this, but I sort of like conceptual analysis, and the concept of meaning, and fairly internalist views of reference, so I am ripe for the picking. |
| 14716 | 2D semantics can't respond to contingent apriori claims, since there is no single proposition involved [Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: It is objected to 2D semantics that it cannot explain Kripke's cases of contingent apriori truths, for there is no single proposition (construed as a set of possible worlds) that is both apriori and contingent. | |
| From: Laura Schroeter (Two-Dimensional Semantics [2010], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a rather large objection to the whole 2D plan, if it implies that when we say something there is no single proposition that is being expressed. |
| 15886 | Science rests on the principle that nature is a hierarchy of natural kinds [Harré] |
| Full Idea: The animating principle behind the material and discursive practices of science is the thesis that nature exemplifies multiple hierarchies of natural kinds. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
| A reaction: I agree. I take it to be a brute fact that there seem to be lots of stable natural kinds, which are worth investigating as long as they stay stable. If they are unstable, there needs to be something stable to measure that by - or we give up. |
| 15864 | Classification is just as important as laws in natural science [Harré] |
| Full Idea: Classification systems, or taxonomies, are as important a part of the natural sciences as are the laws of nature. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
| A reaction: This illustrates how our view of science is radically shifted if we give biology equal prominence with physics. |
| 15865 | Newton's First Law cannot be demonstrated experimentally, as that needs absence of external forces [Harré] |
| Full Idea: We can never devise an experimental situation in which there are no external forces to act on a body. It follows that Newton's First Law could never be demonstrated by means of experiment or observation. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
| A reaction: It can't be wholly demonstrated, but certain observations conform to it, such as the movement of low friction bodies, or the movements of planetary bodies. |
| 15862 | Laws can come from data, from theory, from imagination and concepts, or from procedures [Harré] |
| Full Idea: Boyle's Law generalises a mass of messy data culled from an apparatus; Snell's Law is an experimentally derived law deducible from theory; Newton's First Law derives from concepts and thought experiments; Mendel's Law used an experimental procedure. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
| A reaction: Nice examples, especially since Boyle's and Newton's laws are divided by a huge gulf, and arrived at about the same time. On p.35 Harré says these come down to two: abstraction from experiment, and derivation from deep assumptions. |
| 15870 | Are laws of nature about events, or types and universals, or dispositions, or all three? [Harré] |
| Full Idea: What is Newton's First Law about? Is it about events? Is it about types or universals? Is it about dispositions? Or is it, in some peculiar way, about all three? | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
| A reaction: If laws merely chart regularities, then I suppose they are about events (which exhibit the regular patterns). If laws explain, which would be nice, then they are only about universals if you are a platonist. Hence laws are about dispositions. |
| 15871 | Are laws about what has or might happen, or do they also cover all the possibilities? [Harré] |
| Full Idea: Is Newton's First Law about what has actually happened or is it about what might, or could possibly happen? Is it about the actual events and states of the world, or possible events and states? | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
| A reaction: I presume the first sentence distinguishes between what 'might (well)' happen, and what 'could (just) possibly happen'. I take it for granted that laws predict the actual future. The question is are they true of situations which will never occur? |
| 15876 | Maybe laws of nature are just relations between properties? [Harré] |
| Full Idea: The idea of the Dretske-Armstrong-Tooley view is very simple: the laws of nature relate properties to properties. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the relations are necessary ones. I don't see why we need to mention these wretched 'universals' in order to expound this theory. It sounds much more plausible if you just say a property is defined by the way it relates to other properties. |
| 15860 | We take it that only necessary happenings could be laws [Harré] |
| Full Idea: We do not take laws to be recordings of what happens perchance or for the most part, but specifications of what happens necessarily | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a plausible necessary condition for a law, but it may not be a sufficient one. Are trivial necessities laws? On this view if there are no necessities then there are no laws. |
| 15867 | Laws describe abstract idealisations, not the actual mess of nature [Harré] |
| Full Idea: The laws of nature are not simple descriptions of what can be seen to happen. They are descriptions of abstractions and idealisations from a somewhat messy reality. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
| A reaction: This view seems to have increasingly gripped modern philosophers, so that the old view of God decreeing a few simple equations to run the world has faded away. |
| 15872 | Must laws of nature be universal, or could they be local? [Harré] |
| Full Idea: Is a law of nature about everything in the universe or just about a restricted group of things? | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
| A reaction: I presume the answer is that while a law may only refer to a small group of things, the law would still have to apply if that group moved or spread or enlarged, so it would have to be universals. A laws confined to one time or place? Maybe. |
| 15892 | Laws of nature state necessary connections of things, events and properties, based on models of mechanisms [Harré] |
| Full Idea: A law of nature tells us what kinds of things, events and properties (all else being equal) go along with what. The 'must' of natural necessity has its place here because it is bound up with a model or analogy representing generative mechanisms. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is Harré's final page summary of laws. I agree with it. I would say that the laws are therefore descriptive, of the patterns of behaviour that arise when generative mechanisms meet. Maybe laws concern 'transformations'. |
| 15875 | In counterfactuals we keep substances constant, and imagine new situations for them [Harré] |
| Full Idea: In drawing 'countefactual' conclusions we can be thought imaginatively to vary the conditions under which the substance, set-up etc. is manipulated or stimulated, while maintaining constant our conception of the nature of the being in question. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably you could vary the substance and keep the situation fixed, but then the counterfactual seems to be 'about' something different. Either that or the 'situation' is a actually a set of substances to be tested. |