24 ideas
6396 | A sentence is held true because of a combination of meaning and belief [Davidson] |
Full Idea: A sentence is held true because of two factors: what the holder takes the sentence to mean, and what he believes. | |
From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.20) | |
A reaction: A key question is whether a belief (e.g. an imagistic one, or one held by an animal) could be true, even though no sentence is involved. Linguistic philosophers tend to avoid this question, or assume the answer is 'no'. |
23708 | Humeans see properties as having no more essential features and relations than their distinctness [Friend/Kimpton-Nye, by PG] |
Full Idea: The Humean view says properties are 'quiddities', which individuates properties by nothing more than their distinctness from one another, so that dispositions are not essential to them, and there is no limit to possible property recombination. | |
From: report of Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.3.1) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
A reaction: [my summary] All of this is implied by Hume, rather than stated. David Lewis supports this view. The theory of basic powers is the view's main opponent. This quidditist view is not found in physics, where a property's modal profile matters. |
23709 | Dispositions are what individuate properties, and they constitute their essence [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
Full Idea: Dispositions constitute the essences of properties, and hence the identity of a property is not primitive ('quidditism'), but is given in terms of its dispositional relations to other properties. | |
From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.3.1) | |
A reaction: I like the picture that powers are basic, giving rise to dispositions, which combine to produce qualitative and active properties. Powers are precise and relatively few, and properties are ill-defined and very numerous. Being 'influential', for example. |
23707 | Powers are properties which necessitate dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
Full Idea: In broad terms: powers are properties that necessitate dispositions. | |
From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.2) | |
A reaction: If powers are properties then they must be properties 'of' something, which then seems to be more fundamental than the powers. Maybe our concept of an electron helps, which seems to be a bundle of a few properties, but no one even asks 'of' what. |
23714 | Dispositional essentialism (unlike the grounding view) says only fundamental properties are powers [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
Full Idea: Dispositional essentialism yields the view that just fundamental properties and some evolved macro properties are powers. The grounding view, by contrast, seems to yield the result that all properties are powers. | |
From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.7) | |
A reaction: For the second view, Mumford (for example) claims that the sphericity of a ball is a power, but that seems to miss the whole motivation for the powers ontology, which offers a fairly fundamental explanation of laws and modality. |
23711 | A power is a property which consists entirely of dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
Full Idea: In the 'dispositional essentialist' account (the main view) …what it is to be a power is to be a property whose essence is exhaustively constituted by dispositions. | |
From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.4) | |
A reaction: [compressed] Sounds wrong to me. A very complex property (such as 'stormy' weather) could be nothing more than a large bundle of dispositions, but that wouldn't make it a 'power', which has to be simpler and more basic. |
23712 | Powers are qualitative properties which fully ground dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
Full Idea: In the 'grounding' view of powers …powers are qualitative, because their essence can be specified independently of any dispositions or relations, but they fully ground dispositions. | |
From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.4) | |
A reaction: [compressed] They give this as the rival view to dispositional essentialism. It may be a mistake to call a power a property (which needs to be 'of' something). Not sure how powers can be both fundamental and qualitative. Don't they also ground qualities? |
23698 | Dispositions have directed behaviour which occurs if triggered [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
Full Idea: The three platitudes about dispositions are that 1) they are directed towards some specific behaviour, 2) they can be triggered under specific conditions, and 3) their directedness is modal, meaning not 'when it is triggered' but 'it it were triggered'. | |
From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 2.1.1) | |
A reaction: [PG summary] This is the preliminary to an attempt at a precise formal analysis, covering a number of hypothetical problem cases. 3) is the counterfactual rather than material conditional. Seems accurate. |
23699 | 'Masked' dispositions fail to react because something intervenes [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
Full Idea: A disposition is 'masked' when it fails to manifest due to interference, such as a fragile vase packed in bubble wrap, or an antidote taken after some poison. | |
From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 2.2.1) | |
A reaction: [compressed] The easiest account of these would be to say that the stimulus or trigger of the disposition never completely occurs. Poisons are only disposed to kill when they are fully ingested. Bubble wrapped vases can't be properly struck. |
23700 | A disposition is 'altered' when the stimulus reverses the disposition [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
Full Idea: A disposition is subject to 'altering' when the stimulus of the disposition influences whether (and to what degree) an object has that disposition. Either a live wire goes dead when it is touched, or a dead wire has a sensor making it live when touched. | |
From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 2.2.2) | |
A reaction: The word 'fink' is used of such interference. Not much of a problem, I would say, because at the moment when the stimulus comes to do its job, there is no longer a disposition for it to trigger. No different from switching off a light. |
23701 | A disposition is 'mimicked' if a different cause produces that effect from that stimulus [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
Full Idea: A disposition is 'mimicked' by objects without that disposition which behave as though they do have it. Styrofoam plates are not fragile, but make a horrible sound when stressed, causing some annoyed person to break them. | |
From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 2.2.3) | |
A reaction: A rather strained example! It shouldn't be a problem if the same cause (stress) leads to the same effect (breaking), but by a different path which is not the same as fragility. A formal analysis must obviously cover this case. |
23702 | A 'trick' can look like a stimulus for a disposition which will happen without it [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
Full Idea: A 'trick' can behave like a disposition, as when someone says 'abracadabra' over a hot cup of coffee, stimulating it (?) to gradually cool down. | |
From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 2.2.4) | |
A reaction: This is like Humean constant conjunction which is obviously not a cause, such as night following day. Only a problem is this cup of coffee is seen in isolation from all other cups of coffee. Post hoc propter hoc does not apply to all stimuli! |
23703 | Some dispositions manifest themselves without a stimulus [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
Full Idea: Some dispositions, such as loquaciousness or irascibility, are disposed to manifest whether they are provoked to do so. | |
From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 2.3.3) | |
A reaction: We might surmise that such people have internal triggers that get them going, rather than overt ones. The Sun has a disposition to shine, without an external stimulus. The theory of powers says nature is active, rather than being disposed to activity. |
23704 | We could analyse dispositions as 'possibilities', with no mention of a stimulus [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
Full Idea: We might abandon the relational analysis of dispositions (as stimulus-effect), and just say a disposition is a 'possibility', which simply can manifest, however that manifestation comes about. | |
From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 2.3.5) | |
A reaction: [Compressed. He particularly cites Barbara Vetter] A mere 'possibility' seems to cover passive states as well as potentially active ones. A cushion can be dented, but I wouldn't say it was 'disposed' to dent. Radioactive decay is a disposition, though. |
23710 | Dispositionalism says modality is in the powers of this world, not outsourced to possible worlds [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
Full Idea: Dispositionalism does not 'outsource' modality to other possible worlds, it roots modality in the powers of concrete individuals in this world. | |
From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.3.3) | |
A reaction: Possible worlds are to abolish modality, by treating it as the non-modal facts of different worlds. I see the dispositional view as vastly superior, because the world is awash with vivid and undeniable potentialities, and one world is better ontology. |
11145 | Having a belief involves the possibility of being mistaken [Davidson] |
Full Idea: Someone cannot have a belief unless he understands the possibility of being mistaken. | |
From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.170) | |
A reaction: If you pretend to throw a ball for a dog, but don't release it, the dog experiences being mistaken very dramatically. |
6397 | The concept of belief can only derive from relationship to a speech community [Davidson] |
Full Idea: We have the idea of belief from its role in the interpretation of language; as a private attitude it is not intelligible except in relation to public language. So a creature must be a member of a speech community to have the concept of belief. | |
From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.22) | |
A reaction: This shows how Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument (e.g. Idea 4152) hovers behind Davidson's philosophy. The idea is quite persuasive. A solitary creature just follows its mental states. The question of whether it believes them is a meta-thought. |
6392 | Thought depends on speech [Davidson] |
Full Idea: The thesis I want to refine and then argue for is that thought depends on speech. | |
From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.8) | |
A reaction: This has the instant and rather implausible implication that animals don't think. He is not, of course, saying that all thought is speech, which would leave out thinking in images. You can't do much proper thought without concepts and propositions. |
6393 | A creature doesn't think unless it interprets another's speech [Davidson] |
Full Idea: A creature cannot have a thought unless it is an interpreter of the speech of another. | |
From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.9) | |
A reaction: His use of the word 'creature' shows that he is perfectly aware of the issue of whether animals think, and he is, presumably, denying it. At first glance this sounds silly, but maybe animals don't really 'think', in our sense of the word. |
11144 | Concepts are only possible in a language community [Davidson] |
Full Idea: A private attitude is not intelligible except as an adjustment to the public norms provided by language. It follows that a creature must be a member of speech community if it is to have the concept of belief. | |
From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.170) | |
A reaction: This obviously draws on Wittgenstein's private language argument, and strikes me as blatantly wrong, because I take higher animals to have concepts without language. Pure vision gives rise to concepts. I don't even think they are necessarily conscious. |
6395 | An understood sentence can be used for almost anything; it isn't language if it has only one use [Davidson] |
Full Idea: Once a sentence is understood, an utterance of it may be used to serve almost any extra-linguistic purpose; an instrument that could be put to only one use would lack autonomy of meaning, which means it should not be counted as language. | |
From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.17) | |
A reaction: I find this point very appealing, in opposition to the Wittgenstein view of meaning as use. Passwords seem to me a striking case of the separation of meaning and use. I like the phrase 'autonomy of meaning'. Random sticks can form a word. |
6394 | The pattern of sentences held true gives sentences their meaning [Davidson] |
Full Idea: Although most utterances are not concerned with truth, it is the pattern of sentences held true that gives sentences their meaning. | |
From: Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.14) | |
A reaction: Davidson's distinctive version of meaning holism, as opposed to Quine's rather behaviouristic version. I agree that we relate to people through the pattern of sentences they hold true, but I am unconvinced that this 'gives sentences their meaning'. |
4784 | Salmon says processes rather than events should be basic in a theory of physical causation [Salmon, by Psillos] |
Full Idea: Salmon argues that processes rather than events should be the basic entities in a theory of physical causation. | |
From: report of Wesley Salmon (Causal Connections [1984]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §4.2 | |
A reaction: It increasingly strikes me that the concept of a 'process' ought to be ontologically basic. Edelman says the mind is a process. An 'event' is too loose, and a 'fact' too vague, and heaven knows what Hume meant by an 'object'. |
23706 | Hume's Dictum says no connections are necessary - so mass and spacetime warping could separate [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
Full Idea: Hume's Dictum says there are no necessary connections between existences, …and also between the distinct properties that individuals instantiate. …It follows that an object's property of mass and its disposition to warp space-time could come apart. | |
From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.2) | |
A reaction: [compressed] This nicely pinpoints the heart of the Humean view, to which scientific essentialists and fans of powers in nature object. The objectors include me. |