16 ideas
| 8250 | So-called 'free logic' operates without existence assumptions [Meinong, by George/Van Evra] |
| Full Idea: Meinong has recently been credited with inspiring 'free logic': a logic without existence assumptions. | |
| From: report of Alexius Meinong (The Theory of Objects [1904]) by George / Van Evra - The Rise of Modern Logic 8 | |
| A reaction: This would appear to be a bold escape from the quandries concerning the existential implications of quantifiers. I immediately find it very appealing. It seems to spell disaster for the Quinean program of deducing ontology from language. |
| 8719 | There can be impossible and contradictory objects, if they can have properties [Meinong, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: Meinong (and Priest) leave room for impossible objects (like a mountain made entirely of gold), and even contradictory objects (such as a round square). This would have a property, of 'being a contradictory object'. | |
| From: report of Alexius Meinong (The Theory of Objects [1904]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 6.8 | |
| A reaction: This view is only possible with a rather lax view of properties. Personally I don't take 'being a pencil' to be a property of a pencil. It might be safer to just say that 'round squares' are possible linguistic subjects of predication. |
| 8971 | There are objects of which it is true that there are no such objects [Meinong] |
| Full Idea: There are objects of which it is true that there are no such objects. | |
| From: Alexius Meinong (The Theory of Objects [1904]), quoted by Peter van Inwagen - Existence,Ontological Commitment and Fictions p.131 | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen say this idea is 'infamous', but Meinong is undergoing a revival, and commitment to non-existent objects may be the best explanation of some ways of talking. |
| 8718 | Meinong says an object need not exist, but must only have properties [Meinong, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: Meinong distinguished between 'existing objects' and 'subsisting objects', and being an object does not imply existence, but only 'having properties'. | |
| From: report of Alexius Meinong (The Theory of Objects [1904]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 6.8 | |
| A reaction: Meinong is treated as a joke (thanks to Russell), but this is good. "Father Christmas does not exist, but he has a red coat". He'd better have some sort of existy aspect if he is going to have a property. So he's 'an object'. 'Insubstantial'? |
| 7756 | Meinong said all objects of thought (even self-contradictions) have some sort of being [Meinong, by Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Meinong insisted (à la Anselm) that any possible object of thought - even a self-contradictory one - has being of a sort even though only a few such things are so lucky as to exist in reality as well. | |
| From: report of Alexius Meinong (The Theory of Objects [1904]) by William Lycan - Philosophy of Language Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: ['This idea gave Russell fits' says Lycan]. In the English-speaking world this is virtually the only idea for which Meinong is remembered. Russell (Idea 5409) was happy for some things to merely 'subsist' as well as others which could 'exist'. |
| 15781 | The objects of knowledge are far more numerous than objects which exist [Meinong] |
| Full Idea: The totality of what exists, including what has existed and what will exist, is infinitely small in comparison with the totality of Objects of knowledge. | |
| From: Alexius Meinong (The Theory of Objects [1904]), quoted by William Lycan - The Trouble with Possible Worlds 01 | |
| A reaction: This is rather profound, but the word 'object' doesn't help. I would say 'What we know concerns far more than what merely exists'. |
| 6215 | 'Contingent' means that the cause is unperceived, not that there is no cause [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: For contingent, men do not mean that which hath no cause, but that which hath not for cause any thing that we perceive, as when a traveller meets a shower, they both had sufficient causes, but they didn't cause one another, so we say it was contingent. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Of Liberty and Necessity [1654], §95) | |
| A reaction: Contingent nowadays means 'might not have happened', or 'does not happen in all possible worlds'. Personally I share Hobbes' doubts about the concept of contingency, and this is quite a good account of the misunderstanding. |
| 20298 | The traditional a priori is justified without experience; post-Quine it became unrevisable by experience [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Where Kant and others had traditionally assumed that the a priori concerned beliefs 'justifiable independently of experience', Quine and others of the time came to regard it as beliefs 'unrevisable in the light of experience'. | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 3.7) | |
| A reaction: That throws a rather striking light on Quine's project. Of course, if the a priori is also necessary, then it has to be unrevisable. But is a bachelor necessarily an unmarried man? It is not necessary that 'bachelor' has a fixed meaning. |
| 20300 | Externalist synonymy is there being a correct link to the same external phenomena [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Externalists are typically committed to counting expressions as 'synonymous' if they happen to be linked in the right way to the same external phenomena, even if a thinker couldn't realise that they are by reflection alone. | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Fodor] Externalists always try to link to concrete things in the world, but most of our talk is full of generalities, abstractions and fiction which don't link directly to anything. |
| 20294 | 'Married' does not 'contain' its symmetry, nor 'bigger than' its transitivity [Rey] |
| Full Idea: If Bob is married to Sue, then Sue is married to Bob. If x bigger than y, and y bigger than z, x is bigger than z. The symmetry of 'marriage' or transitivity of 'bigger than' are not obviously 'contained in' the corresponding thoughts. | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: [Also 'if something is red, then it is coloured'] This is a Fregean criticism of Kant. It is not so much that Kant was wrong, as that the concept of analyticity is seen to have a much wider application than Kant realised. Especially in mathematics. |
| 20293 | Analytic judgements can't be explained by contradiction, since that is what is assumed [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Rejecting 'a married bachelor' as contradictory would seem to have no justification other than the claim that 'All bachelors are unmarried is analytic, and so cannot serve to justify or explain that claim. | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: Rey is discussing Frege's objection to Kant (who tried to prove the necessity of analytic judgements, on the basis of the denial being a contradiction). |
| 20297 | Analytic statements are undeniable (because of meaning), rather than unrevisable [Rey] |
| Full Idea: What's peculiar about the analytic is that denying it seem unintelligible. Far from unrevisability explaining analyticity, it seems to be analyticitiy that explains unrevisability; we only balk at denying unmarried bachelors because that's what it means! | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 3.7) | |
| A reaction: This is a criticism of Quine, who attacked analyticity when it is understood as unrevisability. Obviously we could revise the concept of 'bachelor', if our marriage customs changed a lot. Rey seems right here. |
| 20301 | The meaning properties of a term are those which explain how the term is typically used [Rey] |
| Full Idea: It may be that the meaning properties of a term are the ones that play a basic explanatory role with regard to the use of the term generally, the ones in virtue ultimately of which a term is used with that meaning. | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Devitt 1996, 2002, and Horwich 1998, 2005) I spring to philosophical life whenever I see the word 'explanatory', because that is the point of the whole game. They are pointing to the essence of the concept (which is explanatory, say I). |
| 20302 | An intrinsic language faculty may fix what is meaningful (as well as grammatical) [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The existence of a separate language faculty may be an odd but psychologically real fact about us, and it may thereby supply a real basis for commitments about not only what is or is not grammatical, but about what is a matter of natural language meaning. | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the Chomskyan view of analytic sentences. An example from Chomsky (1977:142) is the semantic relationships of persuade, intend and believe. It's hard to see how the secret faculty on its own could do the job. Consensus is needed. |
| 20303 | Research throws doubts on the claimed intuitions which support analyticity [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The movement of 'experimental philosophy' has pointed to evidence of considerable malleability of subject's 'intuitions' with regard to the standard kinds of thought experiments on which defenses of analytic claims typically rely. | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: See Cappelen's interesting attack on the idea that philosophy relies on intuitions, and hence his attack on experimental philosophy. Our consensus on ordinary English usage hardly qualifies as somewhat vague 'intuitions'. |
| 20299 | If we claim direct insight to what is analytic, how do we know it is not sub-consciously empirical? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: How in the end are we going to distinguish claims or the analytic as 'rational insight', 'primitive compulsion', inferential practice or folk belief from merely some deeply held empirical conviction, indeed, from mere dogma. | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: This is Rey's summary of the persisting Quinean challenge to analytic truths, in the face of a set of replies, summarised by the various phrases here. So do we reject a dogma of empiricism, by asserting dogmatic empiricism? |