Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Content Preservation', 'The Philosophy of Logic' and 'Positions'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

---

6 ideas

1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 6. Deconstruction

8216	Deconstruction is not neutral; it intervenes [Derrida]
	Full Idea: Deconstruction, I have insisted, is not neutral. It intervenes.
	From: Jacques Derrida (Positions [1971], p.76)
	A reaction: This, I think, is because there is in Derrida, as in most French philosophers, a strong streak of Marxism, and a desire to change the world, rather than merely understanding it. Idea 8213 shows the sort of thing he wants to change.

2. Reason / C. Styles of Reason / 1. Dialectic

8213	I try to analyse certain verbal concepts which block and confuse the dialectical process [Derrida]
	Full Idea: I have tried to analyse certain marks in writing which are undecidables, false verbal properties, which inhabit philosophical opposition, resisting and disorganising it, without ever constituting a third term, withour ever leaving room for a solution.
	From: Jacques Derrida (Positions [1971], p.40)
	A reaction: [I have simplified his sentence!] Much of Derrida seems to be a commentary on the Hegelian dialectic, and the project is presumably to figure out why philosophy is not advancing in the way we would like. Interesting...

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 5. The Infinite / i. Cardinal infinity

18200	Very large sets should be studied in an 'if-then' spirit [Putnam]
	Full Idea: Sets of a very high type or very high cardinality (higher than the continuum, for example), should today be investigated in an 'if-then' spirit.
	From: Hilary Putnam (The Philosophy of Logic [1971], p.347), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics
	A reaction: Quine says the large sets should be regarded as 'uninterpreted'.

6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 4. Mathematical Empiricism / b. Indispensability of mathematics

18199	Indispensability strongly supports predicative sets, and somewhat supports impredicative sets [Putnam]
	Full Idea: We may say that indispensability is a pretty strong argument for the existence of at least predicative sets, and a pretty strong, but not as strong, argument for the existence of impredicative sets.
	From: Hilary Putnam (The Philosophy of Logic [1971], p.346), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics II.2

8857	We must quantify over numbers for science; but that commits us to their existence [Putnam]
	Full Idea: Quantification over mathematical entities is indispensable for science..., therefore we should accept such quantification; but this commits us to accepting the existence of the mathematical entities in question.
	From: Hilary Putnam (The Philosophy of Logic [1971], p.57), quoted by Stephen Yablo - Apriority and Existence
	A reaction: I'm not surprised that Hartry Field launched his Fictionalist view of mathematics in response to such a counterintuitive claim. I take it we use numbers to slice up reality the way we use latitude to slice up the globe. No commitment to lines!

13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 1. External Justification

9382	Subjects may be unaware of their epistemic 'entitlements', unlike their 'justifications' [Burge]
	Full Idea: I call 'entitlement' (as opposed to justification) the epistemic rights or warrants that need not be understood by or even be accessible to the subject.
	From: Tyler Burge (Content Preservation [1993]), quoted by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered §III
	A reaction: I espouse a coherentism that has both internal and external components, and is mediated socially. In Burge's sense, animals will sometimes have 'entitlement'. I prefer, though, not to call this 'knowledge'. 'Entitled true belief' is good.