Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Necessary Existents', 'Events' and 'Analyticity Reconsidered'

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17 ideas

2. Reason / D. Definition / 4. Real Definition
A sentence may simultaneously define a term, and also assert a fact [Boghossian]
     Full Idea: It doesn't follow from the fact that a given sentence is being used to implicitly define one of its ingredient terms, that it is not a factual statement. 'This stick is a meter long at t' may define an ingredient terms and express something factual.
     From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III)
     A reaction: This looks like a rather good point, but it is tied in with a difficulty about definition, which is deciding which sentences are using a term, and which ones are defining it. If I say 'this stick in Paris is a meter long', I'm not defining it.
5. Theory of Logic / I. Semantics of Logic / 2. Formal Truth
Conventionalism agrees with realists that logic has truth values, but not over the source [Boghossian]
     Full Idea: Conventualism is a factualist view: it presupposes that sentences of logic have truth values. It differs from a realist view in its conception of the source of those truth values, not on their existence. I call the denial of truths Non-Factualism.
     From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III)
     A reaction: It barely seems to count as truth is we say 'p is true because we say so'. It is a truth about an agreement, not a truth about logic. Driving on the left isn't a truth about which side of the road is best.
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 2. Processes
Slow and continuous events (like balding or tree-growth) are called 'processes', not 'events' [Simons]
     Full Idea: Some changes are slow and continuous and are called 'processes' rather than events; the growth of a tree or the greying of John's hair.
     From: Peter Simons (Events [2003], 3.2)
     A reaction: So making a loaf of bread is an event rather than a process, and World War I was a process rather than an event? If you slow down a dramatic event (on film), you see that it is really a process. I take 'process' to be a much more illuminating word.
Maybe processes behave like stuff-nouns, and events like count-nouns [Simons]
     Full Idea: There is arguably a parallel between the mass-count distinction among meanings of nouns and the process-event distinction among meanings of verbs. Processes, like stuff, do not connote criteria for counting, whereas events, like things, do.
     From: Peter Simons (Events [2003], 6.2)
     A reaction: Hm. You can have several processes, and a process can come to an end - but then you can have several ingredients of a cake, and you can run out of one of them. This may be quite a helpful distinction.
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / a. Nature of events
Einstein's relativity brought events into ontology, as the terms of a simultaneity relationships [Simons]
     Full Idea: The ontology of events rose in philosophy with the rise of relativity theory in physics. Einstein postulated the relativity of simultaneity to an observer's state of motion. The terms of the relation of simultaneity must be events or their parts.
     From: Peter Simons (Events [2003], 1.1.2)
     A reaction: Intriguing. Philosophers no doubt think they are way ahead of physicists in such a metaphysical area. Personally I regard the parentage of the concept as good grounds for scepticism about it. See Idea 7621 for my reason.
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 4. A Priori as Necessities
'Snow is white or it isn't' is just true, not made true by stipulation [Boghossian]
     Full Idea: Isn't it overwhelmingly obvious that 'Either snow is white or it isn't' was true before anyone stipulated a meaning for it, and that it would have been true even if no one had thought about it, or chosen it to be expressed by one of our sentences?
     From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §I)
     A reaction: Boghossian would have to believe in propositions (unexpressed truths) to hold this - which he does. I take the notion of truth to only have relevance when there are minds around. Otherwise the so-called 'truths' are just the facts.
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 8. A Priori as Analytic
The a priori is explained as analytic to avoid a dubious faculty of intuition [Boghossian]
     Full Idea: The central impetus behind the analytic explanation of the a priori is a desire to explain the possibility of a priori knowledge without having to postulate a special evidence-gathering faculty of intuition.
     From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §I)
     A reaction: I don't see at all why one has to postulate a 'faculty' in order to talk about intuition. I take an intuition to be an apprehension of a probable truth, combined with an inability to articulate how the conclusion was arrived at.
That logic is a priori because it is analytic resulted from explaining the meaning of logical constants [Boghossian]
     Full Idea: The analytic theory of the apriority of logic arose indirectly, as a by-product of the attempt to explain in what a grasp of the meaning of the logical constants consists.
     From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III)
     A reaction: Preumably he is referring to Wittgenstein's anguish over the meaning of the word 'not' in his World War I notebooks. He first defined the constants by truth tables, then asserted that they were purely conventional - so logic is conventional.
We can't hold a sentence true without evidence if we can't agree which sentence is definitive of it [Boghossian]
     Full Idea: If there is no sentence I must hold true if it is to mean what it does, then there is no basis on which to argue that I am entitled to hold it true without evidence.
     From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III)
     A reaction: He is exploring Quine's view. Truth by convention depends on agreeing which part of the usage of a term constitutes its defining sentence(s), and that may be rather tricky. Boghossian says this slides into the 'dreaded indeterminacy of meaning'.
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 11. Denying the A Priori
We may have strong a priori beliefs which we pragmatically drop from our best theory [Boghossian]
     Full Idea: It is consistent with a belief's being a priori in the strong sense that we should have pragmatic reasons for dropping it from our best overall theory.
     From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], n 6)
     A reaction: Does 'dropping it' from the theory mean just ignoring it, or actually denying it? C.I. Lewis is the ancestor of this view. Could it be our 'best' theory, while conflicting with beliefs that were strongly a priori? Pragmatism can embrace falsehoods.
12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 2. Intuition
If we learn geometry by intuition, how could this faculty have misled us for so long? [Boghossian]
     Full Idea: If we learn geometrical truths by intuition, how could this faculty have misled us for so long?
     From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III)
     A reaction: This refers to the development of non-Euclidean geometries, though the main misleading concerns parallels, which involves infinity. Boghossian cites 'distance' as a concept the Euclideans had misunderstood. Why shouldn't intuitions be wrong?
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / c. Meaning by Role
If meaning depends on conceptual role, what properties are needed to do the job? [Boghossian]
     Full Idea: Conceptual Role Semantics must explain what properties an inference or sentence involving a logical constant must have, if that inference or sentence is to be constitutive of its meaning.
     From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III)
     A reaction: This is my perennial request that if something is to be defined by its function (or role), we must try to explain what properties it has that make its function possible, and those properties will be the more basic explanation.
'Conceptual role semantics' says terms have meaning from sentences and/or inferences [Boghossian]
     Full Idea: 'Conceptual role semantics' says the logical constants mean what they do by virtue of figuring in certain inferences and/or sentences involving them and not others, ..so some inferences and sentences are constitutive of an expression's meaning.
     From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §III)
     A reaction: If the meaning of the terms derives from the sentences in which they figure, that seems to be meaning-as-use. The view that it depends on the inferences seems very different, and is a more interesting but more risky claim.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 8. Synonymy
Could expressions have meaning, without two expressions possibly meaning the same? [Boghossian]
     Full Idea: Could there be a fact of the matter about what each expression means, but no fact of the matter about whether they mean the same?
     From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §II)
     A reaction: He is discussing Quine's attack on synonymy, and his scepticism about meaning. Boghossian and I believe in propositions, so we have no trouble with two statements having the same meaning. Denial of propositions breeds trouble.
19. Language / D. Propositions / 3. Concrete Propositions
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?
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 2. Analytic Truths
There are no truths in virtue of meaning, but there is knowability in virtue of understanding [Boghossian, by Jenkins]
     Full Idea: Boghossian distinguishes metaphysical analyticity (truth purely in virtue of meaning, debunked by Quine, he says) from epistemic analyticity (knowability purely in virtue of understanding - a notion in good standing).
     From: report of Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996]) by Carrie Jenkins - Grounding Concepts 2.4
     A reaction: [compressed] This fits with Jenkins's claim that we have a priori knowledge just through understanding and relating our concepts. She, however, rejects that idea that a priori is analytic.
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 3. Analytic and Synthetic
Epistemological analyticity: grasp of meaning is justification; metaphysical: truth depends on meaning [Boghossian]
     Full Idea: The epistemological notion of analyticity: a statement is 'true by virtue of meaning' provided that grasp of its meaning alone suffices for justified belief in its truth; the metaphysical reading is that it owes its truth to its meaning, not to facts.
     From: Paul Boghossian (Analyticity Reconsidered [1996], §I)
     A reaction: Kripke thinks it is neither, but is a purely semantic notion. How could grasp of meaning alone be a good justification if it wasn't meaning which was the sole cause of the statement's truth? I'm not convinced by his distinction.