53 ideas
| 11832 | We learn a concept's relations by using it, without reducing it to anything [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: We can achieve a lot by elucidations that put a concept to use without attempting to reduce it but, in using the concept, exhibit its connexions with other concepts that are established. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], Pr.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the best line of defence for analytic philosophy, given the much-cited observation that no one has successful reduced any concept by pure analysis. |
| 13838 | A decent modern definition should always imply a semantics [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Today we expect that anything worth calling a definition should imply a semantics. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §10) | |
| A reaction: He compares this with Gentzen 1935, who was attempting purely syntactic definitions of the logical connectives. |
| 13833 | 'Thinning' ('dilution') is the key difference between deduction (which allows it) and induction [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: 'Dilution' (or 'Thinning') provides an essential contrast between deductive and inductive reasoning; for the introduction of new premises may spoil an inductive inference. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §06.2) | |
| A reaction: That is, inductive logic (if there is such a thing) is clearly non-monotonic, whereas classical inductive logic is monotonic. |
| 13834 | Gentzen's Cut Rule (or transitivity of deduction) is 'If A |- B and B |- C, then A |- C' [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: If A |- B and B |- C, then A |- C. This generalises to: If Γ|-A,Θ and Γ,A |- Θ, then Γ |- Θ. Gentzen called this 'cut'. It is the transitivity of a deduction. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §06.3) | |
| A reaction: I read the generalisation as 'If A can be either a premise or a conclusion, you can bypass it'. The first version is just transitivity (which by-passes the middle step). |
| 13835 | Only Cut reduces complexity, so logic is constructive without it, and it can be dispensed with [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Only the cut rule can have a conclusion that is less complex than its premises. Hence when cut is not used, a derivation is quite literally constructive, building up from components. Any theorem obtained by cut can be obtained without it. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §08) |
| 13845 | The various logics are abstractions made from terms like 'if...then' in English [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: I don't believe English is by nature classical or intuitionistic etc. These are abstractions made by logicians. Logicians attend to numerous different objects that might be served by 'If...then', like material conditional, strict or relevant implication. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §15) | |
| A reaction: The idea that they are 'abstractions' is close to my heart. Abstractions from what? Surely 'if...then' has a standard character when employed in normal conversation? |
| 13840 | First-order logic is the strongest complete compact theory with Löwenheim-Skolem [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: First-order logic is the strongest complete compact theory with a Löwenheim-Skolem theorem. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §13) |
| 13844 | A limitation of first-order logic is that it cannot handle branching quantifiers [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Henkin proved that there is no first-order treatment of branching quantifiers, which do not seem to involve any idea that is fundamentally different from ordinary quantification. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §13) | |
| A reaction: See Hacking for an example of branching quantifiers. Hacking is impressed by this as a real limitation of the first-order logic which he generally favours. |
| 13842 | Second-order completeness seems to need intensional entities and possible worlds [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Second-order logic has no chance of a completeness theorem unless one ventures into intensional entities and possible worlds. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §13) |
| 13837 | With a pure notion of truth and consequence, the meanings of connectives are fixed syntactically [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: My doctrine is that the peculiarity of the logical constants resides precisely in that given a certain pure notion of truth and consequence, all the desirable semantic properties of the constants are determined by their syntactic properties. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §09) | |
| A reaction: He opposes this to Peacocke 1976, who claims that the logical connectives are essentially semantic in character, concerned with the preservation of truth. |
| 13839 | Perhaps variables could be dispensed with, by arrows joining places in the scope of quantifiers [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: For some purposes the variables of first-order logic can be regarded as prepositions and place-holders that could in principle be dispensed with, say by a system of arrows indicating what places fall in the scope of which quantifier. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §11) | |
| A reaction: I tend to think of variables as either pronouns, or as definite descriptions, or as temporary names, but not as prepositions. Must address this new idea... |
| 11863 | (λx)[Man x] means 'the property x has iff x is a man'. [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The Lambda Abstraction Operator: We can write (λx)[Man x], which may be read as 'the property that any x has just if x is a man'. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: This technical device seems to be a commonplace in modern metaphysical discussions. I'm assuming it can be used to discuss properties without venturing into second-order logic. Presumably we could call the property here 'humanity'. |
| 13843 | If it is a logic, the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem holds for it [Hacking] |
| Full Idea: A Löwenheim-Skolem theorem holds for anything which, on my delineation, is a logic. | |
| From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §13) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an unusually conservative view. Shapiro is the chap who can give you an alternative view of these things, or Boolos. |
| 14746 | What exists can't depend on our conceptual scheme, and using all conceptual schemes is too liberal [Sider on Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: It would be incredible if what there is, rather than what we select for attention, depends on human activity and our conceptual scheme. One might expand to possible sortal concepts, rather than our language, but that amounts to four-dimensionalism. | |
| From: comment on David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 5.3 | |
| A reaction: [compression of a nice anti-Wiggins paragraph] He suggests that Wiggins is seeking an intermediate course (between narrow chauvinism about concepts, and excessive liberalism) in a discussion of natural kinds versus artifacts. |
| 11900 | We can accept criteria of distinctness and persistence, without making the counterfactual claims [Mackie,P on Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: We might agree with Wiggins's theory of individuation, but reject his thesis that a thing's principle of individuation (of distinctness and persistence) must be preserved in all counterfactual situations. | |
| From: comment on David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 8.7 | |
| A reaction: I'm not even convinced that initial individuation consists of falling under a sortal, and I prefer to discuss the powers of the thing, rather than counterfactual facts about behaviour. |
| 11870 | Activity individuates natural things, functions do artefacts, and intentions do artworks [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: What a principle of activity does completely for a natural thing, and the function does imperfectly for an ordinary artefact, the artist's conception of his own making of the work must do for the painting. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.12) | |
| A reaction: This nicely sums up Wiggins on individuation, and he seems to effectively elide individuation with essence. I certainly feel uneasy that a work of art needs a quite separate account from other artefacts. Surely it is just that we are fussier about them? |
| 11866 | The idea of 'thisness' is better expressed with designation/predication and particular/universal [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: It is hard to think of anything true and significant that could not be said using the idea of thisness not better said while respectiving the distinctions designation/predication and particular/universal. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.7) | |
| A reaction: Politis calls 'thisness' the 'ultimate subject of predication', so it is covered in logic by the name for an object. But we need to understand objects, and not just refer to them, and I'm not sure that 'universals' advance our understanding. |
| 11896 | A sortal essence is a thing's principle of individuation [Wiggins, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Wiggins bases sortal essentialism on the notion that a thing's principle of individuation is essential to it. | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 7.1 | |
| A reaction: This idea has failed to make much impression on me. I seem to be the only person who doesn't understand the concept of 'individuation'. Please let me know exactly what it means. Type individuation is not individual individuation, I presume. |
| 15835 | Wiggins's sortal essentialism rests on a thing's principle of individuation [Wiggins, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Wiggins bases sortal essentialism on the notion that a thing's principle of individuation is essential to it. | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 7.1 | |
| A reaction: My problem with this is that individuation is a human activity, not an intrinsic feature of the entities in the external world. Entities presumably have a 'unity', but I'm not sure about a 'principle' that does that job, though Aristotle is sympathetic. |
| 11841 | The evening star is the same planet but not the same star as the morning star, since it is not a star [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The evening star is the same planet but not the same star as the morning star. For Venus is not a star. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice objection to the idea that identity is entirely a matter of falling under the same sortal category. |
| 10679 | 'Sortalism' says parts only compose a whole if it falls under a sort or kind [Wiggins, by Hossack] |
| Full Idea: 'Sortalism' endorses the view that some things have parts, but denies that every collection of things composes something. Whenever there is a particular, there must be a sort or kind to which it belongs. | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Keith Hossack - Plurals and Complexes 7 | |
| A reaction: What is the status of 'the first of its kind'? This seems to say that a token only has identity if it has type-identity. This sounds wildly wrong to me. I've made a 'thing' for you, but I haven't decided what it is yet. |
| 14363 | Identity a=b is only possible with some concept to give persistence and existence conditions [Wiggins, by Strawson,P] |
| Full Idea: Wiggins says an identity a=b stands no chance of being true unless there is some concept f under which a falls and under which b falls, which 'determines identity, persistence and existence conditions for members of its extension'. | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Peter F. Strawson - Review of 'Sameness and Substance' p.604 | |
| A reaction: This is the first clear statement I have met of Wiggins's central idea, upon which his sortal essentialism is built. Strawson's exposition adds that each thing necessarily falls under the 'highest' appropriate sortal ('dog', rather than 'terrier'). |
| 14364 | A thing is necessarily its highest sortal kind, which entails an essential constitution [Wiggins, by Strawson,P] |
| Full Idea: In Wiggins's theory, necessity carries over from the kind to constitution. If Toby is necessarily a dog and 'dog' is a natural kind term, then Toby necessarily has the constitution of a dog, the features of which make up the real essence of being a dog. | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Peter F. Strawson - Review of 'Sameness and Substance' p.605 | |
| A reaction: The essence will then presumably consist of all and only the characteristics which are shared by all dogs whatsoever. So how do you decide the borderline between wolf and dog? Why isn't a wolf a dog? |
| 11851 | Many predicates are purely generic, or pure determiners, rather than sortals [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: There are countless predicates in English that have the appearance of sortal predicates but are purely generic (animal, machine, artefact), or are pure determinables for sortal determination (space-occupier, entity, substance). | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.6) | |
| A reaction: This is preparing the ground for a specification of a sortal which defines something essential as being the hallmark of identity. It is never quite clear to me whether Wiggins's case rests on a nominal or a real essence. |
| 11865 | The possibility of a property needs an essential sortal concept to conceive it [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: A thing could have a property only if its having the property could be conceived, and that requires some sortal concept which adequately answers the Aristotelian question what the thing is. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: [Algebra omitted!] The core idea of Wiggins's theory. It seems at first glance to be a revival of Aristotelian essentialism, but his view of that seems to merely involve falling into a category. He treats sortal concepts as Aristotle's 'primary being'. |
| 14744 | Objects can only coincide if they are of different kinds; trees can't coincide with other trees [Wiggins, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: Wiggins says that coincidence is possible only between objects of different kinds. Trees and cats coincide with aggregates of matter, but never trees with trees or cats with cats. | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 5.3 | |
| A reaction: At first glance this sounds quite plausible, but I think this commitment to the priority of kinds produces huge confusion, given that we only derive our notions of kinds from inductions derived from individuals. Language perpetuates old inductions. |
| 11852 | Is the Pope's crown one crown, if it is made of many crowns? [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The Pope's crown is made of crowns. There is no definite answer, when the Pope is wearing his crown, to the question 'how many crowns does he have on his head?' | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: A very nice example, in which the identity of the item seems clear enough, until you try to apply a sortal to it. I can't get excited about it, though, because calling it one 'crown' creates uncertainty, but calling it the 'Pope's crown' doesn't. |
| 11875 | Boundaries are not crucial to mountains, so they are determinate without a determinate extent [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: It can be perfectly determinate which mountain x is without x's extent's being determinate. A mountain is not, after all, something essentially demarcated by its extent or boundary. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: This endorses something I have always wanted to assert ('a vague boundary is still a boundary'), but with the interesting addition that one might think about vagueness in terms of what is essential to a thing. Hm.... |
| 14749 | Identity is an atemporal relation, but composition is relative to times [Wiggins, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: Wiggins points out that identity is an atemporal relation whereas composition, like parthood, holds only relative to times. | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 5.3 | |
| A reaction: If David Cameron is identical to the Prime Minister, that doesn't seem to be atemporal. If x=7 in this problem, I can change x to something else in the next problem. x had better not be equal to 7 and to 9. |
| 11844 | If I destroy an item, I do not destroy each part of it [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: If I repair or destroy an item, I do not repair or destroy each part of it (and since each part of a part is a part this would be difficult). | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.6) | |
| A reaction: This seems like a nice refutation of any attempt to claim that a thing is no more than the sum of its parts, but one could analyse the notion of 'destroy', and find it just meant introducing gaps between parts. |
| 11861 | We can forget about individual or particularized essences [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Let us be realistic, and forget about individual or particularized essences. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: This is the rather weird position you reach if you follow Wiggins's 'modest' essentialism, deriving from a thing merely falling under a sortal, or into a category. What is a natural kind, if its members don't each have a shared essence? |
| 11871 | Essences are not explanations, but individuations [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Essences of natural things are not fancified vacuities parading themselves ...as the ultimate explanation of everything that happens in the world. They are natures whose possession is a precondition of their owners being divided from the rest of reality. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: Thus Wiggins rejects the explanation account of essence, with an assertion of his own (highly implausible) view that essence is about individuation rather than about behaviour. Individuation strikes me as an entirely human activity, and not 'real'. |
| 11879 | Essentialism is best represented as a predicate-modifier: □(a exists → a is F) [Wiggins, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Wiggins's proposal of a predicate-modifier account is the best formal representation of essential statements. ...This simple version is perfectly adequate to represent the claim that a is essentially-F: □(a exists → a is F). | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], Ch.4) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 1.2 | |
| A reaction: I suppose that is right. Having an essence is a feature of an entity, but it has to boil done to characteristics that define the entity, and which it must presumably always have. Could an entity ever lack its essence? |
| 11835 | The nominal essence is the idea behind a name used for sorting [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Things being ranked under Names into sorts only as they agree with certain abstract ideas, to which we have annexed the Names, the essence of each sort comes to nothing but that abstract idea which the sortal name stands for. This is the nominal Essence. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], III.iii.15) | |
| A reaction: He contrasts 'nominal essence' with 'real essence'. A key passage for David Wiggins. One shouldn't put too much emphasis on nominal essence, since it means that someone referred to as 'that idiot over there' (you, perhaps) is necessarily an idiot. |
| 11876 | It is easier to go from horses to horse-stages than from horse-stages to horses [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: If horse-stages made sense at all, it would be easier to go from horses to horse-stages than to go from horse-stages to horses. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 6.9) | |
| A reaction: A nice remark, analogous to 'it is easier to break a vase than to mend it'. Going from horse-stages to horses is the classic difficulty for 'bundle theories' (of objects, or persons): what is it that unites the bundle? |
| 11858 | The question is not what gets the title 'Theseus' Ship', but what is identical with the original [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Let us remember that the title in question is not the title to the sobriquet 'Theseus' Ship'; it is the title to identity with Theseus' ship, a particular ship originating from the eighth century B.C. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: There is an assumption here that identity is defined by origin. What is the origin of the identity of those huge football clubs that began under the name of some village team in 1875? What is the origin of 'England' as a single entity? |
| 11843 | Identity over a time and at a time aren't different concepts [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: People often speak of identity over time and distinguish it from identity at a time. But identity is just identity. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: I myself am guilty of such usage, but it doesn't imply a commitment to a multivocal concept. The epistemological issues (of explaining what it is now, and simply reidentifying it later) seem profoundly different. Hume only admits identity over time. |
| 11864 | Hesperus=Hesperus, and Phosphorus=Hesperus, so necessarily Phosphorus=Hesperus [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The simple proof (from Ruth Barcan Marcus) is: Hesperus is necessarily Hesperus, so if Phosphorus is Hesperus, then Phosphorus is necessarily Hesperus. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: This is the famous idea which she noticed well before Kripke. The point is that the simple logic of the case bestows a necessity on the identity. We shouldn't be confused by the a posteriori and contingent nature of the discovery. |
| 11831 | The formal properties of identity are reflexivity and Leibniz's Law [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The formal properties of identity are the reflexivity of identity, and Leibniz's Law (if x is the same as y, then whatever is true of one is true of the other). | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], Pr.2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably transitivity will also apply, and, indeed, symmetry. He seems to mean something like the 'axiomatic formal properties'. |
| 14362 | Relative Identity is incompatible with the Indiscernibility of Identicals [Wiggins, by Strawson,P] |
| Full Idea: Wiggins argues that Geach's Relative Identity is incompatible with the formal properties of identity, which include, besides transitivity, symmetry and reflexivity, the complete community of properties defined by the Indiscernibility of Identicals. | |
| From: report of David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001]) by Peter F. Strawson - Review of 'Sameness and Substance' p.603 | |
| A reaction: The tricky part is that Wiggins then goes on to say that identity depends on sortals, which sounds very close to the Geach view. I find disentangling them tricky. See Idea 14363 for a helpful comment from Strawson. |
| 11838 | Relativity of Identity makes identity entirely depend on a category [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The thesis of Relativity of Identity (which I steadfastly oppose) ..suggests that it makes all the difference to keeping track of continuants through space and time which concept one subsumes something under. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: [Geach I take to be the villain of this idea] The point is that identity is entirely relative to the sortal concept, where Wiggins wants to make identity a combination of the object itself and our concept of it (I think). |
| 11847 | To identify two items, we must have a common sort for them [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: As a necessary condition of the truth of an identity claim, some common sort f will have to be found to which they each belong. That is the point at which the primary question of identity can come into focus. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: This is the plainest English expression I can find of Wiggins's main thesis. He maintains this thesis, while adamantly denying the idea that identity consists entirely of falling under a concept. |
| 11839 | Do both 'same f as' and '=' support Leibniz's Law? [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Is Leibniz's Law as true for 'is the same as' as it is for '='? | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: [By Leibniz's Law he means if they are the same, they support the same truths] |
| 11845 | Substitutivity, and hence most reasoning, needs Leibniz's Law [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's Law underwrites the substitutivity of identity and this is a principle not long dispensable in any form of reasoning. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: Thus the modern fashion of deriving our metaphysics from our logic. Presumably we can derive it from our epistemology too, or even from our intuitions, if we thought they were good enough as evidence. |
| 11869 | Possible worlds rest on the objects about which we have suppositions [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Worlds are the shadows of our suppositions and they take on their identity from these. Suppositions take on their identity from (inter alia) the objects they relate to. If they sever themselves from these objects, then they collapse. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.11) | |
| A reaction: Sounds good. My picture is of possibilities which are suggested by objecfs in the actual world, with extreme possibilities being at fifth-remove from actuality. Any worlds that go beyond natural possibility are just there for fun. |
| 11850 | Not every story corresponds to a possible world [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: It is perfectly notorious that not every story corresponds to a possible world. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: Thus a fantasy castle might be decorated with 'beautiful circular squares', or be threatened by a lump of enriched uranium twenty feet in diameter. Wiggins is replying to the claim that a possible world represents a 'story'. |
| 19555 | People begin to doubt whether they 'know' when the answer becomes more significant [Conee] |
| Full Idea: Fluent speakers typically become increasingly hesitant about 'knowledge' attributions as the practical significance of the right answer increases. | |
| From: Earl Conee (Contextualism Contested (and reply) [2005], 'Epistemic') | |
| A reaction: The standard examples of this phenomenon are in criminal investigations, and in philosophical discussions of scepticism. Simple observations I take to have maximum unshakable confidence, except in extreme global scepticism contexts. |
| 19557 | Maybe low knowledge standards are loose talk; people will deny that it is 'really and truly' knowledge [Conee] |
| Full Idea: Maybe variable knowledge ascriptions are just loose talk. This is shown when we ask whether weakly supported knowledge is 'really' or 'truly' or 'really and truly' known. Fluent speakers have a strong inclination to doubt or deny that it is. | |
| From: Earl Conee (Contextualism Contested (and reply) [2005], 'Loose') | |
| A reaction: [bit compressed] Conee is suggesting the people are tacitly invariantist about knowledge (they have a fixed standard). But it may be that someone who asks 'do you really and truly know?' is raising the contextual standard. E.g. a barrister. |
| 19556 | Maybe knowledge has fixed standards (high, but attainable), although people apply contextual standards [Conee] |
| Full Idea: It may be that all 'knowledge' attributions have the same truth conditions, but people apply contextually varying standards. The most plausible standard for truth is very high, but not unreachably high. | |
| From: Earl Conee (Contextualism Contested (and reply) [2005], 'Loose') | |
| A reaction: This is the 'invariantist' alternative to contextualism about knowledge. Is it a standard 'for truth'? Either it is or it isn't true, so there isn't a standard. I take the standard to concern the justification. |
| 11848 | Asking 'what is it?' nicely points us to the persistence of a continuing entity [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The special effectiveness of the 'what is it?' question is that, in the case of continuants, it refers us back to our constantly exercised idea of the persistence and life-span of an entity. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Compare 'this is a human' with 'this is a member of a family noted for its longevity'. We can't simply answer 'what is it?' by tossing it into the nearest category. I say we need an individual essence for explanation, not just a sortal. |
| 11859 | The mind conceptualizes objects; yet objects impinge upon the mind [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: The mind conceptualizes objects; yet objects impinge upon the mind. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 3.6) | |
| A reaction: I like this piece of simple common sense. I personally don't think you can reach first base in a sensible discussion if you don't face up to both sides of this idea (especially the second half, which many philosophers, especially of language, neglect). |
| 11836 | We can use 'concept' for the reference, and 'conception' for sense [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: We can use the Fregean 'concept' on the level of reference and naming, and prefer the word 'conception' for the Kantian idea of the sense, or the information needed to understand the concept. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], Pr.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice suggestion, and at first blush I think it should be adopted. Sometimes philosophers regret adopting a terminology several hundred years after it has been agreed. |
| 11860 | Lawlike propensities are enough to individuate natural kinds [Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: For all the purposes of identity and individuation of things that belong to natural kinds..., it is enough to have regard for the lawlike propensities of members of the kind. | |
| From: David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance Renewed [2001], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: This may have got things in reverse, since it is hard to see how you could pick out any laws if you didn't assume the existence of natural kinds which were causing the regularities in the behaviour. |