38 ideas
| 9136 | The paradox of analysis says that any conceptual analysis must be either trivial or false [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: The paradox of analysis says if a conceptual analysis states exactly what the original statement says, then the analysis is trivial; if it says something different from the original, then the analysis is mistaken. All analyses are trivial or false. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 8.5) | |
| A reaction: [source is G.E. Moore] Good analyses typically give explanations, or necessary and sufficient conditions, or inferential relations. At their most trivial they at least produce a more profound dictionary than your usual lexicographer. Not guilty. |
| 3859 | We do not wish merely to predict, we also want to explain [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: We do not wish merely to predict, we also want to explain. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], II.3) |
| 3853 | For science to be rational, we must explain scientific change rationally [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: We are only justified in regarding scientific practice as the very paradigm of rationality if we can justify the claim that scientific change is rationally explicable. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.2) |
| 3870 | The real problem of science is how to choose between possible explanations [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: Once we move beyond investigating correlations between observables the question of what does or should guide our choice between alternative explanatory accounts becomes problematic. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], IX.2) |
| 3854 | Positivists hold that theoretical terms change, but observation terms don't [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: For positivists it was taken that while theory change meant change in the meaning of theoretical terms, the meaning of observational terms was invariant under theory change. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.4) |
| 3855 | Critics attack positivist division between theory and observation [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: The critics of positivism attacked the conception of a dichotomy between theory and observation. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.4) |
| 9131 | Two long understandable sentences can have an unintelligible conjunction [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: If there is an upper bound on the length of understandable sentences, then two understandable sentences can have an unintelligible conjunction. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: Not a huge paradox about the use of the word 'and', perhaps, but a nice little warning to be clear about what is being claimed before you cheerfully assert a screamingly obvious law of thought, such as conjunction. |
| 3869 | More truthful theories have greater predictive power [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: If a theory is a better approximation to the truth, then it is likely that it will have greater predictive power. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], VIII.8) |
| 3861 | Theories generate infinite truths and falsehoods, so they cannot be used to assess probability [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: We cannot explicate a useful notion of verisimilitude in terms of the number of truths and the number of falsehoods generated by a theory, because they are infinite. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.4) |
| 9139 | If nothing exists, no truthmakers could make 'Nothing exists' true [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: If nothing exists, then there are no truthmakers that could make 'Nothing exists' true. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 11.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites David Lewis] We may be confusing truth with facts. I take facts to be independent of minds, but truth only makes sense as a concept in the presence of minds which are endeavouring to think well. |
| 9140 | Which toothbrush is the truthmaker for 'buy one, get one free'? [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: If I buy two toothbrushes on a 'buy one, get one free' offer, which one did I buy and which one did I get free? Those who believe that each contingent truth has a truthmaker are forced to believe that 'buy one, get one free' is false. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 11.6) | |
| A reaction: Nice. There really is no fact of which toothbrush is the free one. The underlying proposition must presumably be 'two for the price of one'. But you could hardly fault the first slogan under the Trades Descriptions Act. |
| 9119 | No attempt to deny bivalence has ever been accepted [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: The history of deviant logics is without a single success. Bivalence has been denied at least since Aristotle, yet no anti-bivalent theory has ever left the philosophical nursery. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is part of a claim that nothing in reality is vague - it is just our ignorance of the truth or falsity of some propositions. Personally I don't see why 'Grandad is bald' has to have a determinate truth value. |
| 9135 | We now see that generalizations use variables rather than abstract entities [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: As philosophers gradually freed themselves from the assumption that all words are names, ..they realised that generalizations really use variables rather than names of abstract entities. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 8.4) | |
| A reaction: This looks like a key thought in trying to understand abstraction - though I don't think you can shake it off that easily. (For all x)(x-is-a-bird then x-has-wings) seems to require a generalised concept of a bird to give a value to the variable. |
| 9125 | Denying problems, or being romantically defeated by them, won't make them go away [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: An unsolvable problem is still a problem, despite Wittgenstein's view that there are no genuine philosophical problems, and Kant's romantic defeatism in his treatment of the antinomies of pure reason. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: I like the spin put on Kant, that he is a romantic in his defeatism. He certainly seems reluctant to slash at the Gordian knot, e.g. by being a bit more drastically sceptical about free will. |
| 9137 | Banning self-reference would outlaw 'This very sentence is in English' [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: The old objection to the ban on self-reference is that it is too broad; it bans innocent sentences such as 'This very sentence is in English'. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 11.1) | |
| A reaction: Tricky. What is the sigificant difference between 'this sentence is in English' and 'this sentence is a lie'? The first concerns context and is partly metalinguistic. The second concerns semantics and truth. Concept and content.. |
| 9116 | Vague words have hidden boundaries [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: Vague words have hidden boundaries. The subtraction of a single grain of sand might turn a heap into a non-heap. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: The first sentence could be the slogan for the epistemic view of vagueness. The opposite view is Sainsbury's - that vague words are those which do not have any boundaries. Sorensen admits his view is highly counterintuitive. I think I prefer Sainsbury. |
| 9132 | An offer of 'free coffee or juice' could slowly shift from exclusive 'or' to inclusive 'or' [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: Sometimes an exclusive 'or' gradually develops into an inclusive 'or'. A restaurant offers 'free coffee or juice'. The customers ask for both, and gradually they are given it, first as a courtesy, and eventually as an expectation. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] A very nice example - of the rot of vagueness even seeping into the basic logical connectives. We don't have to accept it, though. Each instance of usage of 'or', by manager or customer, might be clearly one or the other. |
| 3867 | De re necessity arises from the way the world is [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: A necessary truth is 'de re' if its necessity arises from the way the world is. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], VII.6) |
| 3872 | We must assess the truth of beliefs in identifying them [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: We cannot determine what someone's beliefs are independently of assessing to some extent the truth or falsity of the beliefs. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], X.4) |
| 9128 | It is propositional attitudes which can be a priori, not the propositions themselves [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: The primary bearer of apriority is the propositional attitude (believing, knowing, guessing and so on) rather than the proposition itself. A proposition could be a priori to homo sapiens but a posteriori to Neandethals. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: A putative supreme being is quite useful here, who might even see the necessity of Arsenal beating Manchester United next Saturday. Unlike infants, adults know a priori that square pegs won't fit round holes. |
| 9130 | Attributing apriority to a proposition is attributing a cognitive ability to someone [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: Every attribution of apriority to a proposition is tacitly an attribution of a cognitive ability to some thinker. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: The ability would include a range of background knowledge, as well as a sheer power of intellect. If you know all of Euclid's theorems, you will spot facts about geometrical figues quicker than me. His point is important. |
| 9118 | The colour bands of the spectrum arise from our biology; they do not exist in the physics [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: The bands of colour in a colour spectrum do not correspond to objective discontinuities in light wavelengths. These apparently external bands arise from our biology rather than simple physics. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: If any more arguments are needed to endorse the fact that some qualities are clearly secondary (and, to my amazement, such arguments seem to be very much needed), I would take this to be one of the final conclusive pieces of evidence. |
| 9124 | We are unable to perceive a nose (on the back of a mask) as concave [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: The human perceptual system appears unable to represent a nose as concave rather than convex. If you look at the concave side of a mask, you see the features as convex. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: I don't think that is quite true. You wouldn't put a mask on if you thought it was convex. It is usually when seen at a distance with strong cross-lighting that the effect emerges. Nevertheless, it is an important point. |
| 9126 | Bayesians build near-certainty from lots of reasonably probable beliefs [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: Bayesians demonstrate that a self-correcting agent can build an imposing edifice of near-certain knowledge from numerous beliefs that are only slightly more probable than not. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as highly significant for the coherence account of justification, even if one is sceptical about the arithmetical approach to belief of Bayesianism. It seems obvious that lots of quite likely facts build towards certainty, Watson. |
| 9121 | Illusions are not a reason for skepticism, but a source of interesting scientific information [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers tend to associate illusions with skepticism. But since illusions are signs of modular construction, they are actually reason for scientific hope. Illusions have been very useful in helping us to understand vision. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice reversal of the usual view. If I see double, it reveals to me that my eyes are not aligned properly. Anyone led to scepticism by illusions should pay more attention to themselves, and less to the reality they hope to know directly. |
| 3857 | Defeat relativism by emphasising truth and reference, not meaning [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: The challenge of incommensurability can be met once it is realised that in comparing theories the notions of truth and reference are more important than that of meaning. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], I.6) |
| 3858 | A full understanding of 'yellow' involves some theory [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: A full grasp of the concept '…is yellow' involves coming to accept as true bits of theory; that is, generalisations involving the term 'yellow'. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], II.2) |
| 3862 | All theories contain anomalies, and so are falsified! [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: According to Feyerabend all theories are born falsified, because no theory has ever been totally free of anomalies. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.9) |
| 3863 | The anomaly of Uranus didn't destroy Newton's mechanics - it led to Neptune's discovery [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: When scientists observed the motion of Uranus, they did not give up on Newtonian mechanics. Instead they posited the existence of Neptune. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.9) |
| 3864 | Anomalies are judged against rival theories, and support for the current theory [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: Whether to reject an anomaly has to be decided on the basis of the availability of a rival theory, and on the basis of the positive evidence for the theory in question. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], III.9) |
| 3865 | Why should it matter whether or not a theory is scientific? [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: Why should it be so important to distinguish between theories that are scientific and those that are not? | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], IV.3) |
| 3866 | If theories are really incommensurable, we could believe them all [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: If theories are genuinely incommensurable why should I be faced with the problem of choosing between them? Why not believe them all? | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], VII.1) |
| 9134 | The negation of a meaningful sentence must itself be meaningful [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: The negation of any meaningful sentence must itself be meaningful. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 8.1) | |
| A reaction: Nice. Compare 'there is another prime number beyond the highest one we have found' with its negation. The first seems verifiable in principle, but the second one doesn't. So the verificationist must deny Sorensen's idea? |
| 9133 | Propositions are what settle problems of ambiguity in sentences [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: Propositions play the role of dis-ambiguators; they are the things between which utterances are ambiguous. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 7.7) | |
| A reaction: I have become a great fan of propositions, and I think this is one of the key reasons for believing in them. The proposition is what we attempt to pin down when asked 'what exactly did you mean by what you just said?' |
| 3871 | Explaining an action is showing that it is rational [Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: To explain an action as an action is to show that it is rational. | |
| From: W.H. Newton-Smith (The Rationality of Science [1981], X.2) |
| 7270 | Historical interpretation aims to recapture the author's view of the work [Croce] |
| Full Idea: Historical interpretation enables us to see a work of art as its author saw it in the moment of production. | |
| From: Benedetto Croce (Aesthetic as Science of Expression [1902], §II), quoted by W Wimsatt/W Beardsley - The Intentional Fallacy §II | |
| A reaction: Wimsatt and Beardsley quote this as the romantic antithesis of their own view, but there is a blurring between understanding a work and judging. Personally I consider intentions essential for understanding, and valuable for judgement. |
| 9129 | I can buy any litre of water, but not every litre of water [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: I am entitled to buy any litre of water, but I am not entitled to buy every litre of water. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: A decent social system must somehow draw a line between buying up all the water and buying up all the paintings of Vermeer. Even the latter seems wicked, but it is hard to pin down the reason. |
| 9122 | God cannot experience unwanted pain, so God cannot understand human beings [Sorensen] |
| Full Idea: Theologians worry that God may be an alien being. God cannot feel pain since pain is endured against one's will. God is all powerful and suffers nothing against His Will. To understand pain, one must experience pain. So God's power walls him off from us. | |
| From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: I can't think of a good theological reply to this. God, and Jesus too (presumably), can only experience pain if they volunteer for it. It is inconceivable that they could be desperate for it to stop, but were unable to achieve that. |