7 ideas
8188 | Davidson takes truth to attach to individual sentences [Davidson, by Dummett] |
Full Idea: Davidson, by contrast to Frege, has taken truth as attaching to linguistic items, that is, to actual or hypothetical token sentences. | |
From: report of Donald Davidson (True to the Facts [1969]) by Michael Dummett - Truth and the Past 1 | |
A reaction: My personal notion of truth is potentially applicable to animals, so this doesn't appeal to me. I am happy to think of animals as believing simple propositions that never get as far as language, and being right or wrong about them. |
17644 | Metaphysical realism is committed to there being one ultimate true theory [Putnam] |
Full Idea: What makes the metaphysical realist a 'metaphysical' realist is his belief that there is somewhere 'one true theory' (two theories which are true and complete descriptions of the world would be mere notational variants of each other). | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Why there isn't a ready-made world [1981], 'Causation') | |
A reaction: This is wrong!!!!! Commitment to one reality doesn't imply that only one comprehensive theory is possible. Theory-making (at least in any human language, or in mathematics) is an inherently limited activity. |
17648 | It is an illusion to think there could be one good scientific theory of reality [Putnam] |
Full Idea: The idea of a coherent theory of the noumena; consistent, systematic, and arrived at by 'the scientific method' seems to me to be chimerical. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Why there isn't a ready-made world [1981], 'Failure') | |
A reaction: I sort of agree with this, but it definitely doesn't make me an anti-realist. |
17643 | Shape is essential relative to 'statue', but not essential relative to 'clay' [Putnam] |
Full Idea: Relative to the description 'that statue', a certain shape is an essential property of the object; relative to the description 'that piece of clay', the shape not an essential property (but being clay is). | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Why there isn't a ready-made world [1981], 'Intro') | |
A reaction: Relative to the description 'that loathsome object', is the statue essentially loathsome? Asserting the essence of an object is a response to the object, not a response to a description of it. This is not the solution to the statue problem. |
17642 | The old view that sense data are independent of mind is quite dotty [Putnam] |
Full Idea: Moore and Russell held the strange view that 'sensibilia' (sense data) are mind-independent entities: a view so dotty, on the face of it, that few analytic philosophers like to be reminded that this is how analytic philosophy started. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Why there isn't a ready-made world [1981], 'Intro') | |
A reaction: I suspect the view was influenced by the anti-psychologism of Frege, and his idea that all the other concepts are mind-independent, living by their own rules in a 'third realm'. Personally I think analytic philosophy needs more psychology, not less. |
19216 | Propositions (such as 'that dog is barking') only exist if their items exist [Williamson] |
Full Idea: A proposition about an item exists only if that item exists... how could something be the proposition that that dog is barking in circumstances in which that dog does not exist? | |
From: Timothy Williamson (Necessary Existents [2002], p.240), quoted by Trenton Merricks - Propositions | |
A reaction: This is a view of propositions I can't make sense of. If I'm under an illusion that there is a dog barking nearby, when there isn't one, can I not say 'that dog is barking'? If I haven't expressed a proposition, what have I done? |
17645 | An alien might think oxygen was the main cause of a forest fire [Putnam] |
Full Idea: Imagine a Venusian lands on Earth and observes a forest fire, and says 'I know what caused that - the atmosphere is saturated with oxygen!'. Thus one man's 'background condition' can easily be another man's 'cause'. | |
From: Hilary Putnam (Why there isn't a ready-made world [1981], 'Causation') | |
A reaction: You can't sweep 'the' cause of a fire away so easily. There is always oxygen on Earth, but only occasional forest fires. The oxygen doesn't 'trigger' the fire (i.e. it isn't the proximate cause). |