12 ideas
| 21548 | The null class is the class with all the non-existents as its members [MacColl, by Lackey] |
| Full Idea: In 1905 the Scottish logician Hugh MacColl published a paper in which he argued that the null class in logic should be taken as the class with all the non-existents as its members. | |
| From: report of Hugh MacColl (Symbolic Reasoning [1905]) by Douglas Lackey - Intros to Russell's 'Essays in Analysis' p.95 | |
| A reaction: For the null object (zero) Frege just chose one sample concept with an empty extension. MacColl's set seems to have a lot of members, given that it is 'null'. How many, I wonder? Russell responded to this paper. |
| 19718 | Indefeasibility does not imply infallibility [Grundmann] |
| Full Idea: Infallibility does not follow from indefeasibility. | |
| From: Thomas Grundmann (Defeasibility Theory [2011], 'Significance') | |
| A reaction: If very little evidence exists then this could clearly be the case. It is especially true of historical and archaeological evidence. |
| 19717 | Can a defeater itself be defeated? [Grundmann] |
| Full Idea: Can the original justification of a belief be regained through a successful defeat of a defeater? | |
| From: Thomas Grundmann (Defeasibility Theory [2011], 'Defeater-Defs') | |
| A reaction: [Jäger 2005 addresses this] I would have thought the answer is yes. I aspire to coherent justifications, so I don't see justifications as a chain of defeat and counter-defeat, but as collective groups of support and challenge. |
| 19716 | Simple reliabilism can't cope with defeaters of reliably produced beliefs [Grundmann] |
| Full Idea: An unmodified reliabilism does not accommodate defeaters, and surely there can be defeaters against reliably produced beliefs? | |
| From: Thomas Grundmann (Defeasibility Theory [2011], 'Defeaters') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Bonjour 1980] Reliabilism has plenty of problems anyway, since a generally reliable process can obviously occasionally produce a bad result. 20:20 vision is not perfect vision. Internalist seem to like defeaters. |
| 19715 | You can 'rebut' previous beliefs, 'undercut' the power of evidence, or 'reason-defeat' the truth [Grundmann] |
| Full Idea: There are 'rebutting' defeaters against the truth of a previously justified belief, 'undercutting' defeaters against the power of the evidence, and 'reason-defeating' defeaters against the truth of the reason for the belief. | |
| From: Thomas Grundmann (Defeasibility Theory [2011], 'How') | |
| A reaction: That is (I think) that you can defeat the background, the likelihood, or the truth. He cites Pollock 1986, and implies that these are standard distinctions about defeaters. |
| 19713 | Defeasibility theory needs to exclude defeaters which are true but misleading [Grundmann] |
| Full Idea: Advocates of the defeasibility theory have tried to exclude true pieces of information that are misleading defeaters. | |
| From: Thomas Grundmann (Defeasibility Theory [2011], 'What') | |
| A reaction: He gives as an example the genuine news of a claim that the suspect has a twin. |
| 19714 | Knowledge requires that there are no facts which would defeat its justification [Grundmann] |
| Full Idea: The 'defeasibility theory' of knowledge claims that knowledge is only present if there are no facts that - if they were known - would be genuine defeaters of the relevant justification. | |
| From: Thomas Grundmann (Defeasibility Theory [2011], 'What') | |
| A reaction: Something not right here. A genuine defeater would ensure the proposition was false, so it would simply fail the truth test. So we need a 'defeater' for a truth, which must therefore by definition be misleading. Many qualifications have to be invoked. |
| 19719 | 'Moderate' foundationalism has basic justification which is defeasible [Grundmann] |
| Full Idea: Theories that combine basic justification with the defeasibility of this justification are referred to as 'moderate' foundationalism. | |
| From: Thomas Grundmann (Defeasibility Theory [2011], 'Significance') | |
| A reaction: I could be more sympathetic to this sort of foundationalism. But it begins to sound more like Neurath's boat (see Quine) than like Descartes' metaphor of building foundations. |
| 3488 | Freud treats the unconscious as intentional and hence mental [Freud, by Searle] |
| Full Idea: Freud thinks that our unconscious mental states exist as occurrent intrinsic intentional states even when unconscious. Their ontology is that of the mental, even when they are unconscious. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by John Searle - The Rediscovery of the Mind Ch. 7.V | |
| A reaction: Searle states this view in order to attack it. Whether such states are labelled as 'mental' seems uninteresting. Whether unconscious states can be intentional is crucial, and modern scientific understanding of the brain strongly suggest they can. |
| 5689 | Freud and others have shown that we don't know our own beliefs, feelings, motive and attitudes [Freud, by Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Freud persuaded many that beliefs, wishes and feelings are sometimes unconscious, and even sceptics about Freud acknowledge that there is self-deception about motive and attitudes. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Introspection p.396 | |
| A reaction: This seems to me obviously correct. The traditional notion is that the consciousness is the mind, but now it seems obvious that consciousness is only one part of the mind, and maybe even a peripheral (epiphenomenal) part of it. |
| 23950 | Freud said passions are pressures of some flowing hydraulic quantity [Freud, by Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Freud argued that the passions in general …were the pressures of a yet unknown 'quantity' (which he simply designated 'Q'). He first thought this flowed through neurones, …and always couched the idea in the language of hydraulics. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Robert C. Solomon - The Passions 3.4 | |
| A reaction: This is the main target of Solomon's criticism, because its imagery has become so widespread. It leads to talk of suppressing emotions, or sublimating them. However, it is not too different from Nietzsche's 'drives' or 'will to power'. |
| 22344 | Freud is pessimistic about human nature; it is ambivalent motive and fantasy, rather than reason [Freud, by Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Freud takes a thoroughly pessimistic view of human nature. ...Introspection reveals only the deep tissue of ambivalent motive, and fantasy is a stronger force than reason. Objectivity and unselfishness are not natural to human beings. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900], II) by Iris Murdoch - The Sovereignty of Good II | |
| A reaction: Interesting. His view seems to have coloured the whole of modern culture, reinforced by the hideous irrationality of the Nazis. Adorno and Horkheimer attacking the Enlightenment was the last step in that process. |