5 ideas
| 13639 | Quine says higher-order items are intensional, and lack a clearly defined identity relation [Quine, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Quine (in 1941) attacked 'Principia Mathematica' because the items in the range of higher-order variables (attributes etc) are intensional and thus do not have a clearly defined identity relation. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Whitehead and the Rise of Modern Logic [1941]) by Stewart Shapiro - Foundations without Foundationalism 1.3 |
| 21557 | Russell confused use and mention, and reduced classes to properties, not to language [Quine, by Lackey] |
| Full Idea: Quine (1941) said that Russell had confused use and mention, and thus thought he had reduced classes to linguistic entities, while in fact he reduced them only to Platonic properties. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Whitehead and the Rise of Modern Logic [1941]) by Douglas Lackey - Intros to Russell's 'Essays in Analysis' p.133 | |
| A reaction: This is cited as the 'orthodox critical interpretation' of Russell and Whitehead. Confusion of use and mention was a favourite charge of Quine's. |
| 20076 | An intending is a judgement that the action is desirable [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: We can identify an intentional action ...with an all-out conditional judgement that the action is desirable. ...In the case of pure intending, I now suggest that the intention simply is an all-out judgement. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Intending [1978], p.99), quoted by Rowland Stout - Action 8 'Davidson's' | |
| A reaction: 'Pure' intending seems to be what Stout calls 'prior' intending, which is clearer. This still strikes me as obviously false. I judge that it is desirable that I make a cup of coffee, but secretly I'm hoping someone else will make it for me. |
| 20024 | Davidson gave up reductive accounts of intention, and said it was a primitive [Davidson, by Wilson/Schpall] |
| Full Idea: Later Davidson dropped his reductive treatment of intentions (in terms of 'pro-attitudes' and other beliefs), and accepted that intentions are irreducible, and distinct from pro-attitudes. | |
| From: report of Donald Davidson (Intending [1978]) by Wilson,G/Schpall,S - Action 2 | |
| A reaction: Only a philosopher would say that intentions cannot be reduced to something else. Since I have a very physicalist view of the mind, I incline to reduce them to powers and dispositions of physical matter. |
| 5994 | Is the cosmos open or closed, mechanical or teleological, alive or inanimate, and created or eternal? [Robinson,TM, by PG] |
| Full Idea: The four major disputes in classical cosmology were whether the cosmos is 'open' or 'closed', whether it is explained mechanistically or teleologically, whether it is alive or mere matter, and whether or not it has a beginning. | |
| From: report of T.M. Robinson (Classical Cosmology (frags) [1997]) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: A nice summary. The standard modern view is closed, mechanistic, inanimate and non-eternal. But philosophers can ask deeper questions than physicists, and I say we are entitled to speculate when the evidence runs out. |