37 ideas
| 9593 | 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. |
| 23250 | Desired responsible actions result either from rational or from irrational desire [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: And of responsible actions, some are done through habit, some through desire, and of these some through rational and some through irrational desire. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1369a01) | |
| A reaction: Identified by Michael Frede, to illustrate reason having its own distinctive type of desire ('Boulesis'). I suspect that the rational desires are the morally good desires. |
| 5847 | It is the role of dialectic to survey syllogisms [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It belongs to dialectic to survey equally all kinds of syllogism. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1355a08) | |
| A reaction: Since dialectic is central to philosophy, this implies that philosophers ought to be students of logic. This duty seems to me to be taken more seriously in the analytical tradition than in the 'continental' tradition. |
| 9161 | Maybe reasonableness requires circular justifications - that is one coherentist view [Field,H] |
| Full Idea: It is not out of the question to hold that without circular justifications there is no reasonableness at all. That is the view of a certain kind of coherence theorist. | |
| From: Hartry Field (Apriority as an Evaluative Notion [2000], 2) | |
| A reaction: This nicely captures a gut feeling I have had for a long time. Being now thoroughly converted to coherentism, I am drawn to the idea - like a moth to a flame. But how do we distinguish cuddly circularity from its cruel and vicious cousin? |
| 9594 | 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. |
| 9601 | 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. |
| 9599 | 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'. |
| 9602 | 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. |
| 9598 | 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. |
| 16536 | 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). |
| 9596 | 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. |
| 9597 | 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. |
| 9160 | Lots of propositions are default reasonable, but the a priori ones are empirically indefeasible [Field,H] |
| Full Idea: Propositions such as 'People usually tell the truth' seem to count as default reasonable, but it is odd to count them as a priori. Empirical indefeasibility seems the obvious way to distinguish those default reasonable propositions that are a priori. | |
| From: Hartry Field (Apriority as an Evaluative Notion [2000], 1) | |
| A reaction: Sounds reasonable, but it would mean that all the uniformities of nature would then count as a priori. 'Every physical object exerts gravity' probably has no counterexamples, but doesn't seem a priori (even if it is necessary). See Idea 9164. |
| 9164 | We treat basic rules as if they were indefeasible and a priori, with no interest in counter-evidence [Field,H] |
| Full Idea: I argue not that our most basic rules are a priori or empirically indefeasible, but that we treat them as empirically defeasible and indeed a priori; we don't regard anything as evidence against them. | |
| From: Hartry Field (Apriority as an Evaluative Notion [2000], 4) | |
| A reaction: This is the fictionalist view of a priori knowledge (and of most other things, such as mathematics). I can't agree. Most people treat heaps of a posteriori truths (like the sun rising) as a priori. 'Mass involves energy' is indefeasible a posteriori. |
| 9592 | 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. |
| 20181 | 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. |
| 9165 | Reliability only makes a rule reasonable if we place a value on the truth produced by reliable processes [Field,H] |
| Full Idea: Reliability is not a 'factual property'; in calling a rule reasonable we are evaluating it, and all that makes sense to ask about is what we value. We place a high value on the reliability of our inductive and perceptual rules that lead to truth. | |
| From: Hartry Field (Apriority as an Evaluative Notion [2000], 5) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't seem to be a contradiction of reliabilism, since truth is a pretty widespread epistemological value. If you do value truth, then eyes are pretty reliable organs for attaining it. Reliabilism is still wrong, but not for this reason. |
| 9162 | Believing nothing, or only logical truths, is very reliable, but we want a lot more than that [Field,H] |
| Full Idea: Reliability is not all we want in an inductive rule. Completely reliable methods are available, such as believing nothing, or only believing logical truths. But we don't value them, but value less reliable methods with other characteristics. | |
| From: Hartry Field (Apriority as an Evaluative Notion [2000], 3) | |
| A reaction: I would take this excellent point to be an advertisement for inference to the best explanation, which requires not only reliable inputs of information, but also a presiding rational judge to assess the mass of evidence. |
| 9166 | People vary in their epistemological standards, and none of them is 'correct' [Field,H] |
| Full Idea: We should concede that different people have slightly different basic epistemological standards. ..I doubt that any clear sense could be given to the notion of 'correctness' here. | |
| From: Hartry Field (Apriority as an Evaluative Notion [2000], 5) | |
| A reaction: I think this is dead right. There is a real relativism about knowledge, which exists at the level of justification, rather than of truth. The scientific revolution just consisted of making the standards tougher, and that seems to have been a good idea. |
| 5862 | A single counterexample is enough to prove that a truth is not necessary [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If we have a single counter-instance, the argument is refuted as not necessary, even if more cases are otherwise or more often otherwise. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1403a07) | |
| A reaction: This is Aristotle (pioneering hero) pointing out what we now tend to think of as Karl Popper's falsification, the certain way to demonstrate the falseness of a supposed law of nature, by finding one anomaly from it. |
| 5854 | Nobody fears a disease which nobody has yet caught [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Nobody is on his guard against a disease that nobody has yet caught. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1372a27) | |
| A reaction: A beautifully simple indication of one problem with induction. In a dangerous situation, you can't wait around for a few experiences in order to learn the regularities and rules. Either you are doomed, or you must explain using related experiences. |
| 9163 | If we only use induction to assess induction, it is empirically indefeasible, and hence a priori [Field,H] |
| Full Idea: If some inductive rule is basic for us, in the sense that we never assess it using any rules other than itself, then it must be one that we treat as empirically indefeasible (hence as fully a priori, given that it will surely have default status). | |
| From: Hartry Field (Apriority as an Evaluative Notion [2000], 4) | |
| A reaction: This follows on from Field's account of a priori knowledge. See Ideas 9160 and 9164. I think of induction as simply learning from experience, but if experience goes mad I will cease to trust it. (A rationalist view). |
| 9595 | 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. |
| 5849 | Rhetoric is a political offshoot of dialectic and ethics [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Rhetoric is a kind of offshoot of dialectic and of the study of ethics, and is quite properly categorized as political. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1356a25) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle gives a higher status to rhetoric than Socrates and Plato did - and rightly, in my view. We have lost sight of it as a vital part of politics, and philosophers must fight for virtue in rhetoric, which requires right reason and fine principles. |
| 5851 | Pentathletes look the most beautiful, because they combine speed and strength [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The pentathletes are the most beautiful, being at the same time naturally suited to both speed and force. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1361b09) | |
| A reaction: This is still true. Watch the Olympics. The bodies we envy most belong to those who do a variety of disciplines. The most beautiful music fulfils a variety of functions (structure, as well as melody, drama, rhythm, harmony, novelty). |
| 5858 | Men are physically prime at thirty-five, and mentally prime at forty-nine [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The body is in its prime from the ages of thirty to thirty-five, and the soul around the age of forty-nine. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1390b09) | |
| A reaction: Wonderfully specific! It is important that Aristotle is interested in these questions. The good for man follows the path laid out by nature, in which a man rises to his highest good in maturity, and then declines from it into old age. |
| 5855 | We all feel universal right and wrong, independent of any community or contracts [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is something of which we all have an inkling, being a naturally universal right and wrong, even if there should be no community between the parties or contract. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1373b07) | |
| A reaction: This is the strongest assertion I know of in Aristotle of an absolute moral standard, independent of natural function. It makes Aristotle an intuitionist, and is strikingly opposed to contracts as the most basic aspect of morality. |
| 5850 | Happiness is composed of a catalogue of internal and external benefits [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The elements of happiness are: gentle birth, many virtuous friends, wealth, creditable and extensive offspring, a comfortable old age; also health, beauty, strength, size and competitiveness, reputation, status, luck and the virtues. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1360b18) | |
| A reaction: This is Aristotle's pluralism, and his commitment to 'external goods' (rather than the inner good of pure virtue, which the Stoics preferred). 'Gentle birth' might turn out to mean good upbringing and education. Who was the most 'beautiful' philosopher? |
| 5856 | Self-interest is a relative good, but nobility an absolute good [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: One's own interest is a relative good, nobility a good absolutely. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1389b37) | |
| A reaction: The key idea in the whole of Greek moral theory is the concept of what we can call a 'beautiful' action. Such things, or course, tend to be visible in great actions, such as sparing an enemy, rather than the minutiae of well-mannered daily life. |
| 5848 | All good things can be misused, except virtue [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If one used strength, health, wealth and strategic expertise well, one might do the greatest possible good and if badly the greatest possible harm; this is a problem common to all good things, except virtue. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1355b04) | |
| A reaction: Of course, this may just be a tautology about virtue, rather than an empirical observation. However, in 'Ethics' he tries to describe a state of mind (essentially one of harmony) which could never result in misuse. |
| 5853 | The best virtues are the most useful to others [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The greatest virtues must be those most useful to others. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1366b02) | |
| A reaction: I wonder if this applies to the intellectual virtues, as well as to the social virtues? Is this virtue theory's answer to utilitarianism, or utilitarianism's answer to virtue theory? Personally I think good persons are prior to benefits. |
| 5857 | The young feel pity from philanthropy, but the old from self-concern [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Old men are prone to pity, but where the young are so from philanthropy, the old are so from weakness, for they think all these things are near for themselves to suffer. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1390a18) | |
| A reaction: I am shocked to find Aristotle being so cynical. I see no reason why the old should not be as philanthropic as anyone else, and they clearly are so, as when they plant trees for future generations to enjoy. |
| 5859 | Rich people are mindlessly happy [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The character of the rich man is that of the mindlessly happy one. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1391a12) | |
| A reaction: Very nice. It is hard to deny that the rich tend to be happy (in some sense of the word), and recent sociological research has tended to demonstrate this, but the pursuit of wealth must inevitably take the focus away from key intellectual pursuits. Yeh? |
| 5852 | The four constitutions are democracy (freedom), oligarchy (wealth), aristocracy (custom), tyranny (security) [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There are four types of constitution: democracy (whose purpose is freedom), oligarchy (for wealth), aristocracy (for education and customs), and monarch or tyranny (for security). | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1365b28-37) | |
| A reaction: An aristocracy seems to be the guardians of tradition and culture (as in an English public school education). The tyranny of Hitler and Stalin did not exactly lead to security. Democracy and aristocracy are the front-runners. Compare Idea 2821. |
| 9600 | 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. |
| 1660 | It is noble to avenge oneself on one's enemies, and not come to terms with them [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is noble to avenge oneself on one's enemies and not to come to terms with them. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1367a19), quoted by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.189 |
| 5861 | People assume events cause what follows them [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Men take its occurring after as its occurring because. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1401b30) | |
| A reaction: The Latin is 'post hoc propter hoc' - after this so because of this. It is quite a good inductive rule, but obviously open to abuse, as in legal cases, as when someone happens to acquire a lot of money just after a crime. |