23 ideas
| 3123 | Science is in the business of carving nature at the joints [Segal] |
| Full Idea: Science is in the business of carving nature at the joints. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 5) |
| 3125 | Psychology studies the way rationality links desires and beliefs to causality [Segal] |
| Full Idea: A person's desires and beliefs tend to cause what they tend to rationalise. This coordination of causality and rationalisation lies at the heart of psychology. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 5.3) |
| 5831 | The new view is that "water" is a name, and has no definition [Schwartz,SP] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps the modern view is best expressed as saying that "water" has no definition at all, at least in the traditional sense, and is a proper name of a specific substance. | |
| From: Stephen P. Schwartz (Intro to Naming,Necessity and Natural Kinds [1977], §III) | |
| A reaction: This assumes that proper names have no definitions, though I am not clear how we can grasp the name 'Aristotle' without some association of properties (human, for example) to go with it. We need a definition of 'definition'. |
| 5829 | We refer to Thales successfully by name, even if all descriptions of him are false [Schwartz,SP] |
| Full Idea: We can refer to Thales by using the name "Thales" even though perhaps the only description we can supply is false of him. | |
| From: Stephen P. Schwartz (Intro to Naming,Necessity and Natural Kinds [1977], §III) | |
| A reaction: It is not clear what we would be referring to if all of our descriptions (even 'Greek philosopher') were false. If an archaeologist finds just a scrap of stone with a name written on it, that is hardly a sufficient basis for successful reference. |
| 5830 | The traditional theory of names says some of the descriptions must be correct [Schwartz,SP] |
| Full Idea: The traditional theory of proper names entails that at least some combination of the things ordinarily believed of Aristotle are necessarily true of him. | |
| From: Stephen P. Schwartz (Intro to Naming,Necessity and Natural Kinds [1977], §III) | |
| A reaction: Searle endorses this traditional theory. Kripke and co. tried to dismiss it, but you can't. If all descriptions of Aristotle turned out to be false (it was actually the name of a Persian statue), our modern references would have been unsuccessful. |
| 19405 | Substances are in harmony, because they each express the one reality in themselves [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Every substance expresses the whole sequence of the universe in accordance with its own viewpoint or relationship to the rest, so that all are in perfect correspondence with one another. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Identity in Substances and True Propositions [1686], p.98) | |
| A reaction: Thus 'expression' (something like mapping what is exterior) is the mechanism through which God achieves harmony in the universe. Instants of time are said to be successive moments of perfect harmony. |
| 3105 | Is 'Hesperus = Phosphorus' metaphysically necessary, but not logically or epistemologically necessary? [Segal] |
| Full Idea: It is metaphysically necessary that Hesperus is Phosphorus, but not logically necessary, since logical deduction could not reveal its truth, and it is not epistemologically necessary, as the ancient Greeks didn't know the identity. (Natural necessity?) | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 1.6) |
| 3106 | If claims of metaphysical necessity are based on conceivability, we should be cautious [Segal] |
| Full Idea: Since conceivability is the chief method of assessing the claims of metaphysical necessity, I think such claims are incautious. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 1.6) |
| 3113 | The success and virtue of an explanation do not guarantee its truth [Segal] |
| Full Idea: The success and virtue of an explanation do not guarantee its truth. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 2.2) |
| 3112 | Folk psychology is ridiculously dualist in its assumptions [Segal] |
| Full Idea: Commonsense psychology is a powerful explanatory theory, and largely correct, but it seems to be profoundly dualist, and treats minds as immaterial spirits which can transmigrate and exist disembodied. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Fans of folk psychology tend to focus on central normal experience, but folk psychology also seems to range from quirky to barking mad. A 'premonition' is a widely accepted mental event. |
| 3108 | If 'water' has narrow content, it refers to both H2O and XYZ [Segal] |
| Full Idea: My view is that the concepts of both the Earth person and the Twin Earth person refer to BOTH forms of diamonds or water (H2O and XYZ). | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: Fair enough, though that seems to imply that my current concepts may actually refer to all sorts of items of which I am currently unaware. But that may be so. |
| 3110 | Humans are made of H2O, so 'twins' aren't actually feasible [Segal] |
| Full Idea: Humans are largely made of H2O, so there could be no twin on Twin Earth, and (as Kuhn noted) nothing with a significantly different structure from H2O could be macroscopically very like water (but topaz and citrine will do). | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: A small point, but one that appeals to essentialists like me (see under Natural Theory/Laws of Nature). We can't learn much metaphysics from impossible examples. |
| 3124 | Externalists can't assume old words refer to modern natural kinds [Segal] |
| Full Idea: The question of what a pre-scientific term extends over is extremely difficult for a Putnam-style externalist to answer. …There seems no good reason to assume that they extend over natural kinds ('whale', 'cat', 'water'). | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: The assumption seems to be that they used to extend over descriptions, and now they extend over essences, or expert references. This can't be right. They have never changed, but now contain fewer errors. |
| 3117 | Concepts can survive a big change in extension [Segal] |
| Full Idea: We need to think of concepts as organic entities that can persist through changes of extension. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: This would be 'organic' in the sense of modifying and growing. This is exactly right, and the interesting problem becomes the extreme cases, where an individual stretches a concept a long way. |
| 3104 | Must we relate to some diamonds to understand them? [Segal] |
| Full Idea: Is a relationship with diamonds necessary for having a concept of diamonds? | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: Probably not, given that I have a concept of kryptonite, and that I can invent my own concepts. Suppose I was brought up to believe that diamonds are a myth? |
| 3103 | Maybe content involves relations to a language community [Segal] |
| Full Idea: It has been argued (e.g. by Tyler Burge) that certain relations to other language users are determinants of content. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: Burge's idea (with Wittgenstein behind him) strikes me as plausible (more plausible than water and elms determining the content). Our concepts actually shift during conversations. |
| 3111 | Externalism can't explain concepts that have no reference [Segal] |
| Full Idea: Empty terms and concepts provide the largest problem for the externalist thesis of the world dependence of concepts. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: A speculative concept could then become a reality (e.g. an invention). The solution seems to be to say that there is an internal and an external component to most concepts. |
| 3109 | If content is external, so are beliefs and desires [Segal] |
| Full Idea: If we accept Putnam's externalist conclusion about the meaning of a word, it is a short step to a similar conclusion about the contents of the twins' beliefs, desires and so on. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the key step which has launched a whole new externalist view of the nature of the mind. It is one thing to say that I don't quite know what my words mean, another that I don't know my own beliefs. |
| 3116 | Maybe experts fix content, not ordinary users [Segal] |
| Full Idea: Putnam and Burge claim that there could be two words that a misinformed subject uses to express different concepts, but that express just one concept of the experts. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: This pushes the concept outside the mind of the user, which leaves an ontological problem of what concepts are made of, how you individuate them, and where they are located. |
| 3121 | If content is narrow, my perfect twin shares my concepts [Segal] |
| Full Idea: To say that contents of my belief are narrow is to say that they are intrinsic to me, hence that any perfect twin of mine would have beliefs with the same contents. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 5) | |
| A reaction: I personally find this more congenial than externalism. If my twin and I studied chemistry, we would reach identical conclusions about water, as long as we remained perfect twins. |
| 5826 | The intension of "lemon" is the conjunction of properties associated with it [Schwartz,SP] |
| Full Idea: The conjunction of properties associated with a term such as "lemon" is often called the intension of the term "lemon". | |
| From: Stephen P. Schwartz (Intro to Naming,Necessity and Natural Kinds [1977], §II) | |
| A reaction: The extension of "lemon" is the set of all lemons. At last, a clear explanation of the word 'intension'! The debate becomes clear - over whether the terms of a language are used in reference to ideas of properties (and substances?), or to external items. |
| 3119 | Even 'mass' cannot be defined in causal terms [Segal] |
| Full Idea: We can't define mass in terms of its causal powers because massive objects do different things in different physical systems. …What an object (or concept) with a given property does depends on what it interacts with. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: This leaves an epistemological problem, that we believe in mass, but can only get at it within a particular gravitational or inertial system. Don't give up on ontology at this point. |
| 3118 | If thoughts ARE causal, we can't explain how they cause things [Segal] |
| Full Idea: If we identify a psychological property with its causal role then we lose the obvious explanation of why the event has the causal role that it has. | |
| From: Gabriel M.A. Segal (A Slim Book about Narrow Content [2000], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints very nicely one of the biggest errors in modern philosophy. There are good naturalistic reasons to reduce everything to causal role, but there is a deeper layer. Essences! |