18 ideas
| 11103 | We aren't stuck with our native conceptual scheme; we can gradually change it [Quine] |
| Full Idea: We must not leap to the fatalistic conclusion that we are stuck with the conceptual scheme that we grew up in. We can change it bit by bit, plank by plank. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting commitment to Strawson's 'revisionary' metaphysics, rather than its duller cousin 'descriptive' metaphysics. Good for Quine. Remember, though, Davidson's 'On the Very Idea of Conceptual Scheme'. |
| 23295 | Truth cannot be reduced to anything simpler [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: We cannot hope to underpin the concept of truth with something more transparent or easier to grasp. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Folly of Trying to Define Truth [1999], p.21) | |
| A reaction: I suppose precise accounts of correspondence or coherence are offered as replacements for truth, but neither of those ever seem to be possible. I agree with accepting truth as a primitive. |
| 23298 | Neither Aristotle nor Tarski introduce the facts needed for a correspondence theory [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Neither Aristotle's formula nor Tarski's truth definitions are sympathetic to the correspondence theory, because they don't introduce entities like facts or states of affairs for sentences to correspond. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Folly of Trying to Define Truth [1999], p.25) | |
| A reaction: This seems convincing, although it is often claimed that both theories offer a sort of correspondence. |
| 23297 | The language to define truth needs a finite vocabulary, to make the definition finite [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: If the definition of the truth predicate is to be finite (Tarski insisted on this), the definition must take advantage of the fact that sentences, though potentially infinite in number, are constructed from a finite vocabulary. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Folly of Trying to Define Truth [1999], p.23) | |
| A reaction: Not sure whether this is in the object language or the meta-language, though I guess the former. |
| 23296 | We can elucidate indefinable truth, but showing its relation to other concepts [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: We can still say revealing things about truth, by relating it to other concepts like belief, desire, cause and action. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Folly of Trying to Define Truth [1999], p.21) | |
| A reaction: The trickiest concept to link it to is meaning. I think Davidson's view points to the Axiomatic account of truth, which flourished soon after Davidson wrote this. We can give rules for the correct use of 'true'. |
| 11092 | A river is a process, with stages; if we consider it as one thing, we are considering a process [Quine] |
| Full Idea: A river is a process through time, and the river stages are its momentary parts. Identification of the river bathed in once with the river bathed in again is just what determines our subject matter to be a river process as opposed to a river stage. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 1) | |
| A reaction: So if we take a thing which has stages, but instead of talking about the stages we talk about a single thing that endures through them, then we are talking about a process. Sounds very good to me. |
| 11093 | We don't say 'red' is abstract, unlike a river, just because it has discontinuous shape [Quine] |
| Full Idea: 'Red' is surely not going to be opposed to 'Cayster' [name of a river], as abstract to concrete, merely because of discontinuity in geometrical shape? | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 2) | |
| A reaction: I've been slow to grasp the truth of this. However, Quine assumes that 'red' is concrete because 'Cayster' is, but it is perfectly arguable that 'Cayster' is an abstraction, despite all that water. |
| 11101 | General terms don't commit us ontologically, but singular terms with substitution do [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The use of general terms does not commit us to admitting a corresponding abstract entity into our ontology, but an abstract singular term, including the law of putting equals for equals, flatly commits us to an abstract entity named by the term. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 4) | |
| A reaction: Does this mean that in 'for the sake of the children', I have to believe in 'sakes' if I can find a synonym which will substitute for it? |
| 11096 | Discourse generally departmentalizes itself to some degree [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Discourse generally departmentalizes itself to some degree. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 2) | |
| A reaction: I pick this out because I think it is important. There is a continually shifting domain in any conversation ('what we are talking about'), and speech cannot be understand if the shifting domain or department has not been grasped. |
| 11099 | Understanding 'is square' is knowing when to apply it, not knowing some object [Quine] |
| Full Idea: No more need be demanded of 'is square' than that our listener learn when to expect us to apply it to an object and when not; there is no need for the phrase itself to be the name in turn of a separate object of any kind. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 4) |
| 11094 | 'Red' is a single concrete object in space-time; 'red' and 'drop' are parts of a red drop [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Why not view 'red' as naming a single concrete object extended in space and time? ..To say a drop is red is to say that the one object, the drop, is a spatio-temporal part of the other, red, as a waterfall is part of a river. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 2) |
| 11097 | Red is the largest red thing in the universe [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Red is the largest red thing in the universe - the scattered total thing whose parts are all the red things. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 3) |
| 17595 | To unite a sequence of ostensions to make one object, a prior concept of identity is needed [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The concept of identity is central in specifying spatio-temporally broad objects by ostension. Without identity, n acts of ostension merely specify up to n objects. ..But when we affirm identity of object between ostensions, they refer to the same object. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 1) | |
| A reaction: Quine says that there is an induction involved. On the whole, Quine seems to give a better account of identity than Geach or Wiggins can offer. |
| 11095 | We should just identify any items which are indiscernible within a given discourse [Quine] |
| Full Idea: We might propound the maxim of the 'identification of indiscernibles': Objects indistinguishable from one another within the terms of a given discourse should be construed as identical for that discourse. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 2) | |
| A reaction: This increasingly strikes me as the correct way to discuss such things. Identity is largely contextual, and two things can be viewed as type-identical for practical purposes (e.g. teaspoons), but distinguished if it is necessary. |
| 23294 | It is common to doubt truth when discussing it, but totally accept it when discussing knowledge [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: You are following Plato's lead if you worry about the concept of truth when it is the focus of your attention, but you pretend you understand it when trying to cope with knowledge (or belief, memory, perception etc.). | |
| From: Donald Davidson (The Folly of Trying to Define Truth [1999], p.20) | |
| A reaction: Nice to find someone pointing out this absurdity. He says Hume does the same with doubts about the external world, which he ignores when discussing other minds. Belief is holding true; only truths are actually remembered…. |
| 8875 | Sense experiences must have conceptual content, since they are possible reasons for judgements [Brewer,B] |
| Full Idea: Given that sense experiential states do provide reasons for empirical beliefs, they must have conceptual content, ...where a mental state with conceptual content is one where the content is of a possible judgement by the subject. | |
| From: Bill Brewer (Perceptual experience has conceptual content [2005], I) | |
| A reaction: This is, I believe, wrong. Even complex observations, like a pool of blood, only become reasons when they have been interpreted. Otherwise they are just the raw ingredients of evidence. How could an uninterpreted red patch be a 'reason'? |
| 11104 | Concepts are language [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Concepts are language. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 5) | |
| A reaction: Hm. This seems to mean that animals and pre-linguistic children have no concepts. I just don't believe that. |
| 11102 | Apply '-ness' or 'class of' to abstract general terms, to get second-level abstract singular terms [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Applying the operator '-ness' or 'class of' to abstract general terms, we get second-level abstract singular terms. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is the derivation of abstract concepts by naming classes, rather than by deriving equivalence classes. Any theory which doesn't allow multi-level abstraction is self-evidently hopeless. Quine says Frege and Russell get numbers this way. |