Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Interview with Baggini and Stangroom', 'Consistency and realism (with 1972 note)' and 'What is Mathematical Truth?'

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8 ideas

1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 1. Continental Philosophy

6859	Analytic philosophy has much higher standards of thinking than continental philosophy [Williamson]
	Full Idea: Certain advances in philosophical standards have been made within analytic philosophy, and there would be a serious loss of integrity involved in abandoning them in the way required to participate in current continental philosophy.
	From: Timothy Williamson (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.151)
	A reaction: The reply might be to concede the point, but say that the precision and rigour achieved are precisely what debar analytical philosophy from thinking about the really interesting problems. One might as well switch to maths and have done with it.

4. Formal Logic / E. Nonclassical Logics / 4. Fuzzy Logic

6862	Fuzzy logic uses a continuum of truth, but it implies contradictions [Williamson]
	Full Idea: Fuzzy logic is based on a continuum of degrees of truth, but it is committed to the idea that it is half-true that one identical twin is tall and the other twin is not, even though they are the same height.
	From: Timothy Williamson (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.154)
	A reaction: Maybe to be shocked by a contradiction is missing the point of fuzzy logic? Half full is the same as half empty. The logic does not say the twins are different, because it is half-true that they are both tall, and half-true that they both aren't.

5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 3. Value of Logic

6858	Formal logic struck me as exactly the language I wanted to think in [Williamson]
	Full Idea: As soon as I started learning formal logic, that struck me as exactly the language that I wanted to think in.
	From: Timothy Williamson (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001])
	A reaction: It takes all sorts… It is interesting that formal logic might be seen as having the capacity to live up to such an aspiration. I don't think the dream of an ideal formal language is dead, though it will never encompass all of reality. Poetic truth.

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / c. Vagueness as ignorance

6863	Close to conceptual boundaries judgement is too unreliable to give knowledge [Williamson]
	Full Idea: If one is very close to a conceptual boundary, then one's judgement will be too unreliable to constitute knowledge, and therefore one will be ignorant.
	From: Timothy Williamson (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.156)
	A reaction: This is the epistemological rather than ontological interpretation of vagueness. It sounds very persuasive, but I am reluctant to accept that reality is full of very precise boundaries which we cannot quite discriminate.

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / e. Vague objects

6861	What sort of logic is needed for vague concepts, and what sort of concept of truth? [Williamson]
	Full Idea: The problem of vagueness is the problem of what logic is correct for vague concepts, and correspondingly what notions of truth and falsity are applicable to vague statements (does one need a continuum of degrees of truth, for example?).
	From: Timothy Williamson (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.153)
	A reaction: This certainly makes vagueness sound like one of the most interesting problems in all of philosophy, though also one of the most difficult. Williamson's solution is that we may be vague, but the world isn't.

10. Modality / B. Possibility / 1. Possibility

10269	Mathematics eliminates possibility, as being simultaneous actuality in sets [Putnam]
	Full Idea: Mathematics has got rid of possibility by simply assuming that, up to isomorphism anyway, all possibilities are simultaneous actual - actual, that is, in the universe of 'sets'.
	From: Hilary Putnam (What is Mathematical Truth? [1975], p.70), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 7.5

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 1. Perception

6860	How can one discriminate yellow from red, but not the colours in between? [Williamson]
	Full Idea: If one takes a spectrum of colours from yellow to red, it might be that given a series of colour samples along that spectrum, each sample is indiscriminable by the naked eye from the next one, though samples at either end are blatantly different.
	From: Timothy Williamson (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.151)
	A reaction: This seems like a nice variant of the Sorites paradox (Idea 6008). One could demonstrate it with just three samples, where A and C seemed different from each other, but other comparisons didn't.

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / f. Ethical non-cognitivism

22454	We tolerate inconsistency in ethics but not in other beliefs (which reflect an independent order) [Williams,B, by Foot]
	Full Idea: Williams argued that we can tolerate inconsistency in moral principles though not in assertions, and that this is explained by the fact that it is the concern of the latter but not of the former to reflect an 'independent order of things'.
	From: report of Bernard Williams (Consistency and realism (with 1972 note) [1966]) by Philippa Foot - Moral Realism and Moral Dilemma p.37
	A reaction: Put like this, Williams seems to beg the question, which is whether there is an independent moral order to things. There seems to be an easy answer, which is that we are only intolerant of inconsistency when we are confident about it.