Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Philosophy of Philosophy', 'fragments/reports' and 'Moral Relativism'

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22 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / e. Philosophy as reason
Progress in philosophy is incremental, not an immature seeking after drama [Williamson]
     Full Idea: The incremental progress which I envisage for philosophy lacks the drama after which some philosophers still hanker, and that hankering is itself a symptom of the intellectual immaturity that helps hold philosophy back.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], Intro)
     A reaction: This could stand as a motto for the whole current profession of analytical philosophy. It means that if anyone attempts to be dramatic they can make their own way out. They'll find Kripke out there, smoking behind the dustbins.
2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 9. Limits of Reason
All reasoning endlessly leads to further reasoning (Mode 12) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Twelfth mode: all reasoning leads on to further reasoning, and this process goes on forever.
     From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10
Proofs often presuppose the thing to be proved (Mode 15) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Fifteenth mode: proofs often presuppose the thing to be proved.
     From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10
Reasoning needs arbitrary faith in preliminary hypotheses (Mode 14) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Fourteenth mode: reasoning requires arbitrary faith in preliminary hypotheses.
     From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10
All discussion is full of uncertainty and contradiction (Mode 11) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Eleventh mode: all topics of discussion are full of uncertainty and contradiction.
     From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 3. Correspondence Truth critique
Correspondence to the facts is a bad account of analytic truth [Williamson]
     Full Idea: Even if talk of truth as correspondence to the facts is metaphorical, it is a bad metaphor for analytic truth in a way that it is not for synthetic truth.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], 3.1)
     A reaction: A very simple and rather powerful point. Maybe the word 'truth' should be withheld from such cases. You might say that accepted analytic truths are 'conventional'. If that is wrong, then they correspond to natural facts at a high level of abstraction.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 4. Anti-realism
The realist/anti-realist debate is notoriously obscure and fruitless [Williamson]
     Full Idea: The debate between realism and anti-realism has become notorious in the rest of philosophy for its obscurity, convolution, and lack of progress.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], After)
     A reaction: I find this reassuring, because fairly early on I decided that this problem was not of great interest, and quietly tiptoed away. I take the central issue to be whether nature has 'joints', to which the answer appears to be 'yes'. End of story.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / b. Vagueness of reality
There cannot be vague objects, so there may be no such thing as a mountain [Williamson]
     Full Idea: It is sometimes argued that if there is such a thing as a mountain it would be a vague object, but it is logically impossible for an object to be vague, so there is no such thing as a mountain.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], 7.2)
     A reaction: I don't take this to be a daft view. No one is denying the existence of the solid rock that is involved, but allowing such a vague object may be a slippery slope to the acceptance of almost anything as an 'object'.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / e. Vague objects
Common sense and classical logic are often simultaneously abandoned in debates on vagueness [Williamson]
     Full Idea: The constraints of common sense and classical logic are often simultaneously abandoned in debates on vagueness.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], After)
     A reaction: Wiliamson has described himself (in my hearing) as a 'rottweiller realist', but presumably the problem of vagueness interests a lot of people precisely because it pushes us away from common sense and classical logic.
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 1. A Priori Necessary
Modal thinking isn't a special intuition; it is part of ordinary counterfactual thinking [Williamson]
     Full Idea: The epistemology of metaphysical modality requires no dedicated faculty of intuition. It is simply a special case of the epistemology of counterfactual thinking, a kind of thinking tightly integrated with our thinking about the spatio-temporal world.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], 5.6)
     A reaction: This seems to me to be spot-on, though it puts the focus increasingly on the faculty of imagination, as arguably an even more extraordinary feature of brains than the much-vaunted normal consciousness.
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 4. Conceivable as Possible / a. Conceivable as possible
Williamson can't base metaphysical necessity on the psychology of causal counterfactuals [Lowe on Williamson]
     Full Idea: The psychological mechanism that Williamson proposes as the supposedly reliable source of our knowledge of necessities only seems applicable to counterfactuals that are distinctively causal, not metaphysical, in character.
     From: comment on Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007]) by E.J. Lowe - What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? 5
     A reaction: My rough impression of Williamson's account is that it is correct but unilluminating. We have to assess necessities by counterfactual thinking, because nothing else is available (apart from evaluating the coherence of the findings).
We scorn imagination as a test of possibility, forgetting its role in counterfactuals [Williamson]
     Full Idea: The epistemology of modality often focuses on (and pours scorn on) imagination or conceivability as a test of possibility, while ignoring the role of the imagination in the assessment of mundane counterfactuals.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], 5.4)
     A reaction: Good point. I've been guilty of this easy scorn myself. Williamson gives our modal capacities an evolutionary context. What is needed is well-informed imagination, rather than wild fantasy.
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 2. Self-Evidence
There are 'armchair' truths which are not a priori, because experience was involved [Williamson]
     Full Idea: There is extensive 'armchair knowledge' in which experience plays no strictly evidential role, but it may not fit the stereotype of the a priori, because the contribution of experience was more than enabling, such as armchair truths about our environment.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], 5.5)
     A reaction: Once this point is conceded we have no idea where to draw the line. Does 'if it is red it can't be green' derive from experience? I think it might.
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 5. Interpretation
When we say 'is red' we don't mean 'seems red to most people' [Foot]
     Full Idea: One might think that 'is red' means the same as 'seems red to most people', forgetting that when asked if an object is red we look at it to see if it is red, and not in order to estimate the reaction that others will have to it.
     From: Philippa Foot (Moral Relativism [1979], p.23)
     A reaction: True, but we are conscious of our own reliability as observers (e.g. if colourblind, or with poor hearing or eyesight). I don't take my glasses off, have a look, and pronounce that the object is blurred. Ordinary language philosophy in action.
12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 2. Intuition
Intuition is neither powerful nor vacuous, but reveals linguistic or conceptual competence [Williamson]
     Full Idea: Crude rationalists postulate a special knowledge-generating faculty of rational intuition. Crude empiricists regard intuition as an obscurantist term of folk psychology. Linguistic/conceptual philosophy says it reveals linguistic or conceptual competence.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], Intro)
     A reaction: Kripke seems to think that it is the basis of logical competence. I would use it as a blank term for any insight in which we have considerable confidence, and yet are unable to articulate its basis; roughly, for rational thought that evades logic.
When analytic philosophers run out of arguments, they present intuitions as their evidence [Williamson]
     Full Idea: 'Intuition' plays a major role in contemporary analytic philosophy's self-understanding. ...When contemporary analytic philosophers run out of arguments, they appeal to intuitions. ...Thus intuitions are presented as our evidence in philosophy.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], p.214-5), quoted by Herman Cappelen - Philosophy without Intuitions 01.1
     A reaction: Williamson says we must investigate this 'scandal', but Cappelen's book says analytic philosophy does not rely on intuition.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / a. Agrippa's trilemma
Agrippa's Trilemma: justification is infinite, or ends arbitrarily, or is circular [Agrippa, by Williams,M]
     Full Idea: Agrippa's Trilemma offers three possible outcomes for a regress of justification: the chain goes on for ever (infinite); or the chain stops at an unjustified proposition (arbitrary); or the chain eventually includes the original proposition (circular).
     From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60], §2) by Michael Williams - Without Immediate Justification §2
     A reaction: This summarises Ideas 1911, 1913 and 1914. Agrippa's Trilemma is now a standard starting point for modern discussions of foundations. Personally I reject 2, and am torn between 1 (+ social consensus) and 3 (with a benign, coherent circle).
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 1. Relativism
Everything is perceived in relation to another thing (Mode 13) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Thirteenth mode: everything is always perceived in relation to something else.
     From: report of Agrippa (fragments/reports [c.60]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Py.10
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 6. Meaning as Use
You might know that the word 'gob' meant 'mouth', but not be competent to use it [Williamson]
     Full Idea: Someone who acquires the word 'gob' just by being reliably told that it is synonymous with 'mouth' knows what 'gob' means without being fully competent to use it.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], 4.7)
     A reaction: Not exactly an argument against meaning-as-use, but a very nice cautionary example to show that 'knowing the meaning' of a word may be a rather limited, and dangerous, achievement.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / e. Ethical cognitivism
All people need affection, cooperation, community and help in trouble [Foot]
     Full Idea: There is a great deal that all men have in common; all need affection, the cooperation of others, a place in a community, and help in trouble.
     From: Philippa Foot (Moral Relativism [1979], p.33)
     A reaction: There seem to be some people who don't need affection or a place in a community, though it is hard to imagine them being happy. These kind of facts are the basis for any sensible cognitivist view of ethics. They are basic to Foot's view.
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 1. Nature of Value / f. Ultimate value
Do we have a concept of value, other than wanting something, or making an effort to get it? [Foot]
     Full Idea: Do we know what we mean by saying that anything has value, or even that we value it, as opposed to wanting it or being prepared to go to trouble to get it?
     From: Philippa Foot (Moral Relativism [1979], p.35)
     A reaction: Well, I value Rembrandt paintings, but have no aspiration to own one (and would refuse it if offered, because I couldn't look after it properly). And 'we' don't want to move the Taj Mahal to London. She has not expressed this good point very well.
24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 5. Culture
If languages are intertranslatable, and cognition is innate, then cultures are all similar [Williamson]
     Full Idea: Given empirical evidence for the approximate intertranslatability of all human languages, and a universal innate basis of human cognition, we may wonder how 'other' any human culture really is.
     From: Timothy Williamson (The Philosophy of Philosophy [2007], 8.1)
     A reaction: This seems to be a fairly accurate account of the situation. In recent centuries people seem to have been over-impressed by superficial differences in cultural behaviour, but we increasingly see the underlying identity.