7 ideas
| 17644 | Metaphysical realism is committed to there being one ultimate true theory [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: What makes the metaphysical realist a 'metaphysical' realist is his belief that there is somewhere 'one true theory' (two theories which are true and complete descriptions of the world would be mere notational variants of each other). | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Why there isn't a ready-made world [1981], 'Causation') | |
| A reaction: This is wrong!!!!! Commitment to one reality doesn't imply that only one comprehensive theory is possible. Theory-making (at least in any human language, or in mathematics) is an inherently limited activity. |
| 17648 | It is an illusion to think there could be one good scientific theory of reality [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The idea of a coherent theory of the noumena; consistent, systematic, and arrived at by 'the scientific method' seems to me to be chimerical. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Why there isn't a ready-made world [1981], 'Failure') | |
| A reaction: I sort of agree with this, but it definitely doesn't make me an anti-realist. |
| 18435 | Resemblance Nominalists say that resemblance explains properties (not the other way round) [Rodriquez-Pereyra] |
| Full Idea: Resemblance Nominalists cannot explain the resemblance between particulars in terms of their properties, because they explain particulars' properties in terms of their resemblances. | |
| From: Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (Resemblance Nominalism and Russell's Regress [2001], p.397), quoted by Douglas Edwards - Properties 5.5.1 | |
| A reaction: While resemblance does seem to be a primitive fact of experience, and it points us towards the properties, to say that resemblance explains properties is obviously (as so often...) getting things the wrong way round. Properties ARE resemblances?? |
| 17643 | Shape is essential relative to 'statue', but not essential relative to 'clay' [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Relative to the description 'that statue', a certain shape is an essential property of the object; relative to the description 'that piece of clay', the shape not an essential property (but being clay is). | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Why there isn't a ready-made world [1981], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Relative to the description 'that loathsome object', is the statue essentially loathsome? Asserting the essence of an object is a response to the object, not a response to a description of it. This is not the solution to the statue problem. |
| 17642 | The old view that sense data are independent of mind is quite dotty [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Moore and Russell held the strange view that 'sensibilia' (sense data) are mind-independent entities: a view so dotty, on the face of it, that few analytic philosophers like to be reminded that this is how analytic philosophy started. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Why there isn't a ready-made world [1981], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: I suspect the view was influenced by the anti-psychologism of Frege, and his idea that all the other concepts are mind-independent, living by their own rules in a 'third realm'. Personally I think analytic philosophy needs more psychology, not less. |
| 16383 | Puzzled Pierre has two mental files about the same object [Recanati on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: In Kripke's puzzle about belief, the subject has two distinct mental files about one and the same object. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (A Puzzle about Belief [1979]) by François Recanati - Mental Files 17.1 | |
| A reaction: [Pierre distinguishes 'London' from 'Londres'] The Kripkean puzzle is presented as very deep, but I have always felt there was a simple explanation, and I suspect that this is it (though I will leave the reader to think it through, as I'm very busy…). |
| 17645 | An alien might think oxygen was the main cause of a forest fire [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Imagine a Venusian lands on Earth and observes a forest fire, and says 'I know what caused that - the atmosphere is saturated with oxygen!'. Thus one man's 'background condition' can easily be another man's 'cause'. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Why there isn't a ready-made world [1981], 'Causation') | |
| A reaction: You can't sweep 'the' cause of a fire away so easily. There is always oxygen on Earth, but only occasional forest fires. The oxygen doesn't 'trigger' the fire (i.e. it isn't the proximate cause). |