Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Necessary Existents', 'works' and 'Interview with Baggini and Stangroom'

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9 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.

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.

14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 1. Scientific Theory

22363	You have only begun to do real science when you can express it in numbers [Kelvin]
	Full Idea: When you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.
	From: Lord Kelvin (Wm Thomson) (works [1881]), quoted by Reiss,J/Spreger,J - Scientific Objectivity 4.1
	A reaction: [Popular Lectures 1 p.73] Clearly the writer is a physicist! Astronomers discover objects, geologists discover structures, biologists reveal mechanisms.

19. Language / D. Propositions / 3. Concrete Propositions

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?

27. Natural Reality / A. Classical Physics / 2. Thermodynamics / a. Energy

20644	Energy has progressed from a mere formula, to a principle pervading all nature [Kelvin]
	Full Idea: The name 'energy', first used by Thomas Young, has come into use after it was raised from a mere formula of mathematical dynamics to become a principle pervading all nature, and guiding every field of science.
	From: Lord Kelvin (Wm Thomson) (works [1881]), quoted by Peter Watson - Convergence 01 'Principle'
	A reaction: [bit compressed] As far as I can see energy behaves exactly as if it were a substance, like water conserved in rainfalls, and yet it isn't a stuff, and seems to result from a process of abstraction. I take it to be one of the biggest mysteries in physics.