34 ideas
| 16943 | Philosophy is continuous with science, and has no external vantage point [Quine] |
| Full Idea: I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat. …There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.126) | |
| A reaction: Philosophy is generalisation. Science holds the upper hand, because it settles the subject-matter to be generalised. |
| 12585 | Most people can't even define a chair [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: Ordinary speakers are notoriously unsuccessful if asked to offer an explicit definition of the concept 'chair'. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992], 6.1) |
| 16949 | Klein summarised geometry as grouped together by transformations [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Felix Klein's so-called 'Erlangerprogramm' in geometry involved characterizing the various branches of geometry by what transformations were irrelevant to each. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.137) |
| 16939 | Mass terms just concern spread, but other terms involve both spread and individuation [Quine] |
| Full Idea: 'Yellow' and 'water' are mass terms, concerned only with spread; 'apple' and 'square' are terms of divided reference, concerned with both spread and individuation. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.124) | |
| A reaction: Would you like some apple? Pass me that water. It is helpful to see that it is a requirement of 'individuation' that is missing from terms for stuff. |
| 16948 | Once we know the mechanism of a disposition, we can eliminate 'similarity' [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Once we can legitimize a disposition term by defining the relevant similarity standard, we are apt to know the mechanism of the disposition, and so by-pass the similarity. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.135) | |
| A reaction: I love mechanisms, but can we characterise mechanisms without mentioning powers and dispositions? Quine's dream is to eliminate 'similarity'. |
| 16945 | We judge things to be soluble if they are the same kind as, or similar to, things that do dissolve [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Intuitively, what qualifies a thing as soluble though it never gets into water is that it is of the same kind as the things that actually did or will dissolve; it is similar to them. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.130) | |
| A reaction: If you can judge that the similar things 'will' dissolve, you can cut to the chase and judge that this thing will dissolve. |
| 12581 | Perceptual concepts causally influence the content of our experiences [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: Once a thinker has acquired a perceptually individuated concept, his possession of that concept can causally influence what contents his experiences possess. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: Like having 35 different words for 'snow', I suppose. I'm never convinced by such claims. Having the concepts may well influence what you look at or listen to, but I don't see the deliverances of the senses being changed by the concepts. |
| 12579 | Perception has proto-propositions, between immediate experience and concepts [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: Perceptual experience has a second layer of nonconceptual representational content, distinct from immediate 'scenarios' and from conceptual contents. These additional contents I call 'protopropositions', containing an individual and a property/relation. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: When philosophers start writing this sort of thing, I want to turn to neuroscience and psychology. I suppose the philosopher's justification for this sort of speculation is epistemological, but I see no good coming of it. |
| 16944 | Science is common sense, with a sophisticated method [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Sciences differ from common sense only in the degree of methodological sophistication. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.129) | |
| A reaction: Science is normal thinking about the world, but it is teamwork, with the bar set very high. |
| 16940 | Induction is just more of the same: animal expectations [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Induction is essentially only more of the same: animal expectation or habit formation. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.125) | |
| A reaction: My working definition of induction is 'learning from experience', but that doesn't disagree with Quine. Lipton has a richer account of different types of induction. Quine's point is that it rests on resemblance. |
| 16941 | Induction relies on similar effects following from each cause [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Induction expresses our hopes that similar causes will have similar effects. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.125) | |
| A reaction: Some top philosophers are also top teachers, and Quine was one of them, in his writings. He boils it down for the layman. Once again, he is pointing to the fundamental role of the similarity relation. |
| 16933 | Grue is a puzzle because the notions of similarity and kind are dubious in science [Quine] |
| Full Idea: What makes Goodman's example a puzzle is the dubious scientific standing of a general notion of similarity, or of kind. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.116) | |
| A reaction: Illuminating. It might be best expressed as revealing a problem with sortal terms, as employed by Geach, or by Wiggins. Grue is a bit silly, but sortals are subject to convention and culture. 'Natural' properties seem needed. |
| 12586 | Consciousness of a belief isn't a belief that one has it [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: I dispute the view that consciousness of a belief consists in some kind of belief that one has the belief. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: Thus if one is trying to grasp the notion of higher-order thought, it doesn't have to be just more of same but one level up. Any sensible view of the brain would suggest that one sort of activity would lead into an entirely different sort. |
| 16934 | General terms depend on similarities among things [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The usual general term, whether a common noun or a verb or an adjective, owes its generality to some resemblance among the things referred to. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.116) | |
| A reaction: Quine has a nice analysis of the basic role of similarity in a huge amount of supposedly strict scientific thought. |
| 16938 | To learn yellow by observation, must we be told to look at the colour? [Quine] |
| Full Idea: According to the 'respects' view, our learning of yellow by ostension would have depended on our first having been told or somehow apprised that it was going to be a question of color. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.122) | |
| A reaction: Quine suggests there is just one notion of similarity, and respects can be 'abstracted' afterwards. Even the ontologically ruthless Quine admits psychological abstraction! |
| 8486 | Standards of similarity are innate, and the spacing of qualities such as colours can be mapped [Quine] |
| Full Idea: A standard of similarity is in some sense innate. The spacing of qualities (such as red, pink and blue) can be explored and mapped in the laboratory by experiments. They are needed for all learning. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.123) | |
| A reaction: This reasserts Hume's original point in more scientific terms. It is one of the undeniable facts about our perceptions of qualities and properties, no matter how platonist your view of universals may be. |
| 16947 | Similarity is just interchangeability in the cosmic machine [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Things are similar to the extent that they are interchangeable parts of the cosmic machine. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.134) | |
| A reaction: This is a major idea for Quine, because it is a means to gradually eliminate the fuzzy ideas of 'resemblance' or 'similarity' or 'natural kind' from science. I love it! Two tigers are same insofar as they are substitutable. |
| 18568 | Philosophy should merely give necessary and sufficient conditions for concept possession [Peacocke, by Machery] |
| Full Idea: Peacocke's 'Simple Account' says philosophers should determine the necessary and sufficient conditions for possessing a concept, and psychologists should explain how the human mind meets these conditions. | |
| From: report of Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992]) by Edouard Machery - Doing Without Concepts 2 | |
| A reaction: One can't restrict philosophy so easily. Psychologists could do that job themselves, and dump philosophy. Philosophy is interested in the role of concepts in meaning, experience and judgement. If psychologists can contribute to philosophy, fine. |
| 18571 | Peacocke's account of possession of a concept depends on one view of counterfactuals [Peacocke, by Machery] |
| Full Idea: Peacocke's method for discovering the possession conditions of concepts is committed to a specific account of counterfactual judgements - the Simulation Model (judgements we'd make if the antecedent were actual). | |
| From: report of Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992]) by Edouard Machery - Doing Without Concepts 2.3.4 | |
| A reaction: Machery concludes that the Simulation Model is incorrect. This appears to be Edgington's theory of conditionals, though Machery doesn't mention her. |
| 18572 | Peacocke's account separates psychology from philosophy, and is very sketchy [Machery on Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: Peacocke's Simple Account fails to connect the psychology and philosophy of concepts, it subordinates psychology to specific field of philosophy, it is committed to analytic/synthetic, and (most important) its method is very sketchy. | |
| From: comment on Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992]) by Edouard Machery - Doing Without Concepts 2.3.5 | |
| A reaction: Machery says Peacocke proposes a research programme, and he is not surprised that no one has every followed. Machery is a well-known champion of 'experimental philosophy', makes philosophy respond to the psychology. |
| 12577 | Possessing a concept is being able to make judgements which use it [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: Possession of any concept requires the capacity to make judgements whose content contain it. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Idea 12575 suggested that concept possession was an ability just to think about the concept. Why add that one must actually be able to make a judgement? Presumably to get truth in there somewhere. I may only speculate and fantasise, rather than judge. |
| 12578 | A concept is just what it is to possess that concept [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: There can be no more to a concept than is determined by a correct account of what it is to possess that concept. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: He calls this the Principle of Dependence. An odd idea, if you compare 'there is no more to a book than its possession conditions'. If the principle is right, I struggle with the proposal that a philosopher might demonstrate such a principle. |
| 12587 | Employing a concept isn't decided by introspection, but by making judgements using it [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: On the account I have been developing, what makes it the case that someone is employing one concept rather than another is not constituted by his impression of whether he is, but by complex facts about explanations of his judgements. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: I presume this brings truth into the picture, and hence establishes a link between the concept and the external world, rather than merely with other concepts. There seems to be a shadowy behaviourism lurking in the background. |
| 12584 | An analysis of concepts must link them to something unconceptualized [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: At some point a good account of conceptual mastery must tie the mastery to abilities and relations that do not require conceptualization by the thinker. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: This obviously implies a physicalist commitment. Peacocke seeks, as so many do these days in philosophy of maths, to combine this commitment with some sort of Fregean "platonism without tears" (p.101). I don't buy it. |
| 9335 | Concepts are constituted by their role in a group of propositions to which we are committed [Peacocke, by Greco] |
| Full Idea: Peacocke argues that it may be a condition of possessing a certain concept that one be fundamentally committed to certain propositions which contain it. A concept is constituted by playing a specific role in the cognitive economy of its possessor. | |
| From: report of Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992]) by John Greco - Justification is not Internal §9 | |
| A reaction: Peacocke is talking about thought and propositions rather than language. Good for him. I always have problems with this sort of view: how can something play a role if it doesn't already have intrinsic properties to make the role possible? |
| 9336 | A concept's reference is what makes true the beliefs of its possession conditions [Peacocke, by Horwich] |
| Full Idea: Peacocke has a distinctive view of reference: The reference of a concept is that which will make true the primitively compelling beliefs that provide its possession conditions. | |
| From: report of Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992]) by Paul Horwich - Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority §9 | |
| A reaction: The first thought is that there might occasionally be more than one referent which would do the job. It seems to be a very internal view of reference, where I take reference to be much more contextual and social. |
| 16932 | Projectible predicates can be universalised about the kind to which they refer [Quine] |
| Full Idea: 'Projectible' predicates are predicates F and G whose shared instances all do count, for whatever reason, towards confirmation of 'All F are G'. ….A projectible predicate is one that is true of all and only the things of a kind. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.115-6) | |
| A reaction: Both Quine and Goodman are infuriatingly brief about the introduction of this concept. 'Red' is true of all ripe tomatoes, but not 'only' of them. Hardly any predicates are true only of one kind. Is that a scholastic 'proprium'? |
| 20168 | Blame usually has no effect if the recipient thinks it unjustified [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: One of the most obvious facts about blame is that in many cases it is effective only if the recipient thinks that it is justified. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (How free does the will need to be? [1985], 5) | |
| A reaction: The point of the blame might not be reform of the agent, but a public justification for punishment as deterrence, in which case who cares what the agent thinks? Is blame attribution of causes, or reasons to punish? |
| 20167 | Blame partly rests on the fiction that blamed agents always know their obligations [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: Blame rests, in part, on a fiction; the idea that ethical reasons, in particular the special kind of ethical reasons that are obligations, must, really, be available to the blamed agent. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (How free does the will need to be? [1985], 5) | |
| A reaction: In blaming someone, you may be telling them that they should know their obligations, rather than assuming that they do know them. How else can we give children a moral education? |
| 7375 | Quine probably regrets natural kinds now being treated as essences [Quine, by Dennett] |
| Full Idea: The concept of natural kinds was reintroduced by Quine, who may now regret the way it has become a stand-in for the dubious but covertly popular concept of essences. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness Explained 12.2 n2 | |
| A reaction: He is right that Quine would regret it, and he is right that we can't assume that there are necessary essences just because there seem to be stable natural kinds, but personally I am an essentialist, so I'm not that bothered. |
| 16935 | If similarity has no degrees, kinds cannot be contained within one another [Quine] |
| Full Idea: If similarity has no degrees there is no containing of kinds within broader kinds. If colored things are a kind, they are similar, but red things are too narrow for a kind. If red things are a kind, colored things are not similar, and it's too broad. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.118) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I'm on Quine's side with this. We glibly talk of 'kinds', but the criteria for sorting things into kinds seems to be a mess. Quine goes on to offer a better account than the (diadic, yes-no) one rejected here. |
| 16936 | Comparative similarity allows the kind 'colored' to contain the kind 'red' [Quine] |
| Full Idea: With the triadic relation of comparative similarity, kinds can contain one another, as well as overlapping. Red and colored things can both count as kinds. Colored things all resemble one another, even though less than red things do. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.119) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Quine claims that comparative similarity is necessary for kinds - that there be some 'foil' in a similarity - that A is more like C than B is. |
| 16937 | You can't base kinds just on resemblance, because chains of resemblance are a muddle [Quine] |
| Full Idea: If kinds are based on similarity, this has the Imperfect Community problem. Red round, red wooden and round wooden things all resemble one another somehow. There may be nothing outside the set resembling them, so it meets the definition of kind. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.120) | |
| A reaction: [ref. to Goodman 'Structure' 2nd 163- , which attacks Carnap on this] This suggests an invocation of Wittgenstein's family resemblance, which won't be much help for natural kinds. |
| 16942 | It is hard to see how regularities could be explained [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Why there have been regularities is an obscure question, for it is hard to see what would count as an answer. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.126) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard pessimism of the 20th century Humeans, but it strikes me as comparable to the pessimism about science found in Locke and Hume. Regularities are explained all the time by scientists, though the lowest level may be hopeless. |