27 ideas
| 10143 | 'Creative definitions' do not presuppose the existence of the objects defined [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: What I call 'creative definitions' are made from a standpoint in which the existence of the objects that are to be assigned to the terms is not presupposed. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], II.1) |
| 9143 | Implicit definitions must be satisfiable, creative definitions introduce things, contextual definitions build on things [Fine,K, by Cook/Ebert] |
| Full Idea: Fine distinguishes 'implicit definitions', where we must know it is satisfiable before it is deployed, 'creative definitions', where objects are introduced in virtue of the definition, ..and 'contextual definitions', based on established vocabulary. | |
| From: report of Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], 060) by R Cook / P Ebert - Notice of Fine's 'Limits of Abstraction' 3 | |
| A reaction: Fine is a fan of creative definition. This sounds something like the distinction between cutting nature at the perceived joints, and speculating about where new joints might be inserted. Quite a helpful thought. |
| 18365 | If truths are just identical with facts, then truths will make themselves true [David] |
| Full Idea: According to the identity theory of truth, a proposition is true if and only if it is identical with a fact. ...This leads to the unacceptable claim that every true proposition makes itself true (because it is identical to its fact). | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], n 14) |
| 18362 | Examples show that truth-making is just non-symmetric, not asymmetric [David] |
| Full Idea: That 'there is at least one proposition' ...is a case where something makes itself true, which generates a counterexample to the natural assumption that truth-making is asymmetric; truth-making, it seems, is merely non-symmetric. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 4) |
| 18360 | It is assumed that a proposition is necessarily true if its truth-maker exists [David] |
| Full Idea: Friends of the truth-maker principle usually hold that the following states a crucial necessary condition on truth-making: if x makes y true, then, necessarily, if x exists then y is true. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: My objection is that the proposition y is taken to pre-exist, primly awaiting the facts that will award it 'truth'. An ontology that contains an infinity of propositions, most of which so far lack a truth-value, is incoherent. You can have x, but no y! |
| 18358 | Two different propositions can have the same fact as truth-maker [David] |
| Full Idea: Two different propositions can have the same fact as truth-maker. For example, 'L is happy or L is hungry', and 'L is happy or L is thirsty', which are both made true by the fact that L is happy. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 1) |
| 18355 | What matters is truth-making (not truth-makers) [David] |
| Full Idea: The term 'truthmaker' just labels whatever stands in the truth-making relation to a truth. The truth-making relation is crucial. It would have been just as well to refer to the truth-'maker' principle as the truth-'making' principle. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is well said. The commitment of this theory is to something which makes each proposition true. There is no initial commitment to any theories about what sorts of things do the job. |
| 18354 | Correspondence is symmetric, while truth-making is taken to be asymmetric [David] |
| Full Idea: Correspondence appears to be a symmetric relation while truth-making appears to be, or is supposed to be, an asymmetric relation. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], Intro) |
| 18356 | Correspondence is an over-ambitious attempt to explain truth-making [David] |
| Full Idea: Truth-maker theory says that the attempt by correspondence to fill in the generic truth-maker principle with something more informative fails. It is too ambitious, offering a whole zoo of funny facts that are not needed. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: A typical funny fact is a disjunctive fact, which makes 'he is hungry or thirsty' true (when it can just be made true by the simple fact that he is thirsty). |
| 18363 | Correspondence theorists see facts as the only truth-makers [David] |
| Full Idea: Correspondence theorists are committed to the view that, since truth is correspondence with a fact, only facts can make true propositions true. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 4) |
| 18364 | Correspondence theory likes ideal languages, that reveal the structure of propositions [David] |
| Full Idea: Correspondence theorists tend to promote ideal languages, ...which is intended to mirror perfectly the structure of the propositions it expresses. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], n 03) |
| 18357 | What makes a disjunction true is simpler than the disjunctive fact it names [David] |
| Full Idea: The proposition that 'L is happy or hungry' can be made true by the fact that L is happy. This does not have the same complexity or constituent structure as the proposition it makes true. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 1) |
| 18359 | One proposition can be made true by many different facts [David] |
| Full Idea: One proposition can be made true by many different facts (such as 'there are some happy dogs'). | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 1) |
| 10145 | Abstracts cannot be identified with sets [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible for a proponent of both sets and abstracts to identify the abstracts, in any reasonable manner, with the sets. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], IV.1) | |
| A reaction: [This observation emerges from a proof Fine has just completed] Cf Idea 10137. The implication is that there is no compromise view available, and one must choose between abstraction or sets as one's account of numbers and groups of concepts. |
| 10136 | Points in Euclidean space are abstract objects, but not introduced by abstraction [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Points in abstract Euclidean space are abstract objects, and yet are not objects of abstraction, since they are not introduced through a principle of abstraction of the sort envisaged by Frege. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], I.1) | |
| A reaction: The point seems to be that they are not abstracted 'from' anything, but are simpy posited as basic constituents. I suggest that points are idealisations (of smallness) rather than abstractions. They are idealised 'from' substances. |
| 10144 | Postulationism says avoid abstract objects by giving procedures that produce truth [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: A procedural form of postulationism says that instead of stipulating that certain statements are true, one specifies certain procedures for extending the domain to one in which the statement will in fact be true, without invoking an abstract ontology. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], II.5) | |
| A reaction: The whole of philosophy might go better if it was founded on procedures and processes, rather than on objects. The Hopi Indians were right. |
| 18361 | A reflexive relation entails that the relation can't be asymmetric [David] |
| Full Idea: An asymmetric relation must be irreflexive: any case of aRa will yield a reductio of the assumption that R is asymmetric. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 4) |
| 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'. |
| 9144 | Fine's 'procedural postulationism' uses creative definitions, but avoids abstract ontology [Fine,K, by Cook/Ebert] |
| Full Idea: Fine says creative definitions can found mathematics. His 'procedural postulationism' says one stipulates not truths, but certain procedures for extending a domain. The procedures can be stated without invoking an abstract ontology. | |
| From: report of Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], 100) by R Cook / P Ebert - Notice of Fine's 'Limits of Abstraction' 4 | |
| A reaction: (For creative definitions, see Idea 9143) This sounds close in spirit to fictionalism, but with the emphasis on the procedure (which can presumably be formalized) rather than a pure act of imaginative creation. |
| 10141 | Many different kinds of mathematical objects can be regarded as forms of abstraction [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Many different kinds of mathematical objects (natural numbers, the reals, points, lines, figures, groups) can be regarded as forms of abstraction, with special theories having their basis in a general theory of abstraction. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], I.4) | |
| A reaction: This result, if persuasive, would be just the sort of unified account which the whole problem of abstact ideas requires. |
| 10135 | We can abstract from concepts (e.g. to number) and from objects (e.g. to direction) [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: A principle of abstraction is 'conceptual' when the items upon which it abstracts are concepts (e.g. a one-one correspondence associated with a number), and 'objectual' if they are objects (parallel lines associated with a direction). | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], I) |
| 9142 | Fine considers abstraction as reconceptualization, to produce new senses by analysing given senses [Fine,K, by Cook/Ebert] |
| Full Idea: Fine considers abstraction principles as instances of reconceptualization (rather than implicit definition, or using the Context Principle). This centres not on reference, but on new senses emerging from analysis of a given sense. | |
| From: report of Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], 035) by R Cook / P Ebert - Notice of Fine's 'Limits of Abstraction' 2 | |
| A reaction: Fine develops an argument against this view, because (roughly) the procedure does not end in a unique result. Intuitively, the idea that abstraction is 'reconceptualization' sounds quite promising to me. |
| 10137 | Abstractionism can be regarded as an alternative to set theory [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The uncompromising abstractionist rejects set theory, seeing the theory of abstractions as an alternative, rather than as a supplement, to the standard theory of sets. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], I.1) | |
| A reaction: There is also a 'compromising' version. Presumably you still have equivalence classes to categorise the objects, which are defined by their origin rather than by what they are members of... Cf. Idea 10145. |
| 10138 | An object is the abstract of a concept with respect to a relation on concepts [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: We can see an object as being the abstract of a concept with respect to a relation on concepts. For example, we may say that 0 is the abstract of the empty concept with respect to the relation of one-one correspondence. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Limits of Abstraction [2002], I.2) | |
| A reaction: This is Fine's attempt to give a modified account of the Fregean approach to abstraction. He says that the reference to a relation will solve the problem of identity between abstractions. |
| 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. |