38 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. |
| 15592 | The usual Tarskian interpretation of variables is to specify their range of values [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The usual Tarskian way of indicating how a variable is to be interpreted is to simply specify its range of values. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 1.B) |
| 15593 | Variables can be viewed as special terms - functions taking assignments into individuals [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The alternative Tarskian way of indicating how a variable is to be interpreted is that a variable x will be a special case of the semantic value of the term; it will be a function which takes each assignment into the individual which it assigns to x. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 1.B) |
| 15590 | It seemed that Frege gave the syntax for variables, and Tarski the semantics, and that was that [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Once Frege had provided a clear syntactic account of variables and once Tarski had supplemented this with a rigorous semantic account, it would appear that there was nothing more of significance to be said. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: He later remarks that there are now three semantic accounts: the Tarskian, the instantial, and the algebraic [see xref ideas]. He offers a fourth account in his Semantic Relationism. This grows from his puzzles about variables. |
| 15591 | In separate expressions variables seem identical in role, but in the same expression they aren't [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: When we consider the semantic role of 'x' and 'y' in two distinct expressions x>0 and y>0, their semantic roles seems the same. But in the same expression, such as x>y, their roles seem to be different. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 1.A) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This new puzzle about variables leads Fine to say that the semantics of variables, and other expressions, is not intrinsic to them, but depends on their external relations. Variables denote any term - unless another variable got there first. |
| 15595 | The 'algebraic' account of variables reduces quantification to the algebra of its component parts [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: In the 'algebraic' approach to variables, we move from a quantified sentence to the term specifying a property (the λ-term), and then reducing to the algebraic operations for atomic formulas. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 1.C) | |
| A reaction: [Bealer is a source for this view] Fine describes it as an 'algebra of operations'. I presume this is a thoroughly formalist approach to the matter, which doesn't seem to get to the heart of the semantic question. |
| 15594 | 'Instantial' accounts of variables say we grasp arbitrary instances from their use in quantification [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: According to the 'instantial' approach to variables, a closed quantified sentence is to be understood on the basis of one of its instances; from an understanding of an instance we understand satisfaction by an arbitrary individual. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 1.D) | |
| A reaction: Fine comments that this is intuitively plausible, but not very precise, because it depends on 'abstraction' of the individual from the expression. |
| 15599 | Cicero/Cicero and Cicero/Tully may differ in relationship, despite being semantically the same [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: There may be a semantic relationship between 'Cicero' and 'Cicero' that does not hold between 'Cicero' and 'Tully', despite the lack of an intrinsic semantic difference between the names themselves. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 2.E) | |
| A reaction: This is the key idea of Fine's book, and a most original and promising approach to a rather intractable problem in reference. He goes on to distinguish names which are 'strictly' coreferential (the first pair) from those that are 'accidentally' so. |
| 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. |
| 15603 | I can only represent individuals as the same if I do not already represent them as the same [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: I can only represent two individuals as being the same if I do not already represent them as the same. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 3.A) | |
| A reaction: A very nice simple point. If I say 'Hesperus is Hesperus' I am unable to comment on the object, but 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' has a different expressive power. Start from contexts where it is necessary to say that two things are actually one. |
| 15604 | If Cicero=Tully refers to the man twice, then surely Cicero=Cicero does as well? [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: 'Cicero=Cicero' and 'Cicero=Tully' are both dyadic predications. It is unnatural to suppose that the use of the same name converts a dyadic predicate into a reflexive predicate, or that there is one reference to Cicero in the first and two in the second. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 3.A) | |
| A reaction: I am deeply suspicious of the supposed 'property' of being self-identical, but that may not deny that it could be a genuine truth (shorthand for 'the C you saw is the same as the C I saw'). Having an identity makes equality with self possible. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 15602 | Mental files are devices for keeping track of basic coordination of objects [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Mental files should be seen as a device for keeping track of when objects are coordinated (represented as-the-same) and, rather than understand coordination in terms of mental files, we should understand mental files in terms of coordination. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 3.A) | |
| A reaction: Personally I think that the metaphor of a 'label' is much closer to the situation than that of a 'file'. Thus my concept of Cicero is labelled 'Tully', 'Roman', 'orator', 'philosophical example'... My problem is to distinguish the concept from its labels. |
| 15588 | You cannot determine the full content from a thought's intrinsic character, as relations are involved [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: There is no determining the full content of what someone thinks or believes from the individual things that he thinks or believes; we must also look at the threads that tie the contents of these thoughts or beliefs together. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what 'full' content could possibly mean. Does that include all our background beliefs which we hardly ever articulate. Content comes in degrees, or needs an arbitrary boundary? |
| 15596 | The standard aim of semantics is to assign a semantic value to each expression [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The aim of semantics, as standardly conceived, is to assign a semantic value to each (meaningful) expression of the language under consideration. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 1.G) | |
| A reaction: Fine is raising the difficulty that these values can get entangled with one another. He proposes 'semantic connections' as a better aim. |
| 15587 | That two utterances say the same thing may not be intrinsic to them, but involve their relationships [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: In my 'Semantic Relationism' the fact that two utterances say the same thing is not entirely a matter of their intrinsic semantic features; it may also turn on semantic relationships among the utterances of their parts not reducible to those features. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], Intro) | |
| A reaction: You'll need to read the book slowly several times to get the hang of this, but at least it allows that two different utterances might say the same thing (express the same proposition, I would say). |
| 15589 | The two main theories are Holism (which is inferential), and Representational (which is atomistic) [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: For holists a proper theory will be broadly inferential, while for their opponents it will be representational in character, describing relations between expressions and reality. Representational semantics is atomist, holist semantics inferential. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Fine presents these as the two main schools in semantics. His own theory then proposes a more holistic version of the Representational view. He seeks the advantages of Frege's position, but without 'sense'. |
| 15598 | We should pursue semantic facts as stated by truths in theories (and not put the theories first!) [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: A 'semantics' is a body of semantic facts, and a 'semantic theory' is a body of semantic truths. The natural order is a theory being understood as truths, which state facts. Davidson, alas, reversed this order, with facts understood through theories. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 2.C) | |
| A reaction: [compressed; he cites Davidson 1967, and calls it 'one of the most unfortunate tendencies in modern philosophy of language, ..as if chemistry were understood in terms of formulae rather than chemical facts']. |
| 15600 | Referentialist semantics has objects for names, properties for predicates, and propositions for connectives [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The standard referentialist semantics for a language with names is that the semantic value of the name is the object, the content of a predicate is a property, and the content of a logical connective is an operation on propositions. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 2.F) | |
| A reaction: My particular bęte noire is the idea that every predicate names a property. It is the tyranny of having to have a comprehensive semantic theory that drives this implausible picture. And I don't see how an object can be a semantic value… |
| 15601 | Fregeans approach the world through sense, Referentialists through reference [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Fregeans emphasise an orientation towards the speaker: possession of sense makes language meaningful, and language relates to the world through sense. For the Referentialist its representational relationships make it meaningful, and relate it to the world | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], 2.G) | |
| A reaction: The Referentialist approach is for Kripkean fans of direct reference, rather than the Fregean reference through descriptions. I am inclined to favour the old-fashioned, deeply discredited, much mocked Fregean approach. |
| 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'? |
| 15605 | I take indexicals such as 'this' and 'that' to be linked to some associated demonstration [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Demonstrative uses of an indexical such as 'this' or 'that' should be taken to be anaphoric on an associated demonstration. It is a semantic requirement on the use of the indexical that it be coreferential with the demonstration. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Semantic Relationism [2007], Post 'Indexicals') | |
| A reaction: Similarly 'now' must connect to looking at a clock, and 'I' to pointing at some person. The demonstration could be of a verbal event, as much as a physical one. |
| 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. |
| 8338 | A phenomenalist about objects has to be a regularity theorist about causation [Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: If you are a phenomenalist about objects, then there is an important sense in which you ought to be a Regularity theorist about what causation is, in such objects. | |
| From: Galen Strawson (The Secret Connexion [1989], App C) | |
| A reaction: Strawson is denying that Hume is a phenomenalist. One might go a little further, and say that a phenomenalist should abandon the idea of causation (as Russell did). |
| 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. |