Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Philosophy of Philosophy', 'Some Puzzles of Ground' and 'Critique of Judgement II: Teleological'

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19 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.
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.
4. Formal Logic / E. Nonclassical Logics / 3. Many-Valued Logic
Strong Kleene disjunction just needs one true disjunct; Weak needs the other to have some value [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: Under strong Kleene tables, a disjunction will be true if one of the disjuncts is true, regardless of whether or not the other disjunct has a truth-value; under the weak table it is required that the other disjunct also have a value. So for other cases.
     From: Kit Fine (Some Puzzles of Ground [2010], n7)
     A reaction: [see also p.111 of Fine's article] The Kleene tables seem to be the established form of modern three-valued logic, with the third value being indeterminate.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 1. Grounding / a. Nature of grounding
Formal grounding needs transitivity of grounding, no self-grounding, and the existence of both parties [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: The general formal principles of grounding are Transitivity (A«B, B«C/A«C: if A helps ground B and B helps C, then A helps C), Irreflexivity (A«A/absurd: A can't ground itself) and Factivity (A«B/A; A«/B: for grounding both A and B must be the case).
     From: Kit Fine (Some Puzzles of Ground [2010], 4)
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 / 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.
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 / B. Value / 1. Nature of Value / f. Ultimate value
What is contemplated must have a higher value than contemplation [Kant, by Korsgaard]
     Full Idea: Kant objects that the world must have a final purpose in order to be worth contemplating, so contemplation cannot be that final purpose.
     From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement II: Teleological [1790]) by Christine M. Korsgaard - Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value 8 'Arist and'
     A reaction: That is a very good objection. If we contemplate the ordered heavens, the ordering of the heavens seems to have a greater value than our contemplation of them. The reply is that the contemplation is the final purpose being contemplated!
Only a good will can give man's being, and hence the world, a final purpose [Kant]
     Full Idea: A good will is that whereby alone [man's] being can have an absolute worth and in reference to which the being of the world can have a final purpose.
     From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement II: Teleological [1790], C3 443), quoted by Christine M. Korsgaard - Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value 8 'Kant'
     A reaction: I wish Kant gave a better account of what a 'good' will consists of. This is an awful burden to bear when you are making decisions.
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.
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 1. Nature
The Critique of Judgement aims for a principle that unities humanity and nature [Kant, by Bowie]
     Full Idea: The Critique of Judgement aims to show how judgement functions 'according to the principle of the appropriateness of nature to our capacity for cognition'. It is meant to provide a principle of the unity of humankind and nature.
     From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement II: Teleological [1790]) by Andrew Bowie - German Philosophy: a very short introduction 1
     A reaction: Hence this work is often overlooked as a key part of Kant's 'system'. At first he probably didn't realise he was creating a system. Kant set an agenda for the philosophy of the ensuing thirty years.
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 2. Natural Purpose / b. Limited purposes
Without men creation would be in vain, and without final purpose [Kant]
     Full Idea: Without men the whole creation would be mere waste, in vain, and without final purpose.
     From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement II: Teleological [1790], C3 442), quoted by Christine M. Korsgaard - Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value 8 'Kant'
     A reaction: The standard early twenty-first century response to that is 'get over it'! The remark shows how deep religion runs in Kant, despite his great caution about the existence of God. His notion of 'duty' is similarly religious.