9 ideas
| 11211 | If a sound conclusion comes from two errors that cancel out, the path of the argument must matter [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: If a designated conclusion follows from the premisses, but the argument involves two howlers which cancel each other out, then the moral is that the path an argument takes from premisses to conclusion does matter to its logical evaluation. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], II) | |
| A reaction: The drift of this is that our view of logic should be a little closer to the reasoning of ordinary language, and we should rely a little less on purely formal accounts. |
| 11210 | Standardly 'and' and 'but' are held to have the same sense by having the same truth table [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: If 'and' and 'but' really are alike in sense, in what might that likeness consist? Some philosophers of classical logic will reply that they share a sense by virtue of sharing a truth table. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000]) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard view which Rumfitt sets out to challenge. |
| 11212 | The sense of a connective comes from primitively obvious rules of inference [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: A connective will possess the sense that it has by virtue of its competent users' finding certain rules of inference involving it to be primitively obvious. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], III) | |
| A reaction: Rumfitt cites Peacocke as endorsing this view, which characterises the logical connectives by their rules of usage rather than by their pure semantic value. |
| 12251 | Substantial forms are not understood, and explain nothing [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Clearly no explanation can be given by these substantial forms for any natural action, since their defenders admit that they are occult and that they do not understand them themselves, ...so they explain nothing. | |
| From: René Descartes (Letters to Regius [1642], 1642.01), quoted by David S. Oderberg - Real Essentialism 267 n5 | |
| A reaction: [Oderberg gives refs for attack by Locke and Hume, p.66] Descartes' target is Aristotle's hylomorphism. The problem seems to be understanding what Aristotle meant, which is much more than mere 'shape'. More like 'controlling principle'. |
| 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. |
| 11214 | We learn 'not' along with affirmation, by learning to either affirm or deny a sentence [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: The standard view is that affirming not-A is more complex than affirming the atomic sentence A itself, with the latter determining its sense. But we could learn 'not' directly, by learning at once how to either affirm A or reject A. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], IV) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems fairly anti-Fregean in spirit, because it looks at the psychology of how we learn 'not' as a way of clarifying what we mean by it, rather than just looking at its logical behaviour (and thus giving it a secondary role). |
| 16772 | An angelic mind would not experience pain, even when connected to a human body [Descartes, by Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Descartes points out that an angelic mind, even if causally connected to a human body, would not experience the same sort of bodily sensations; it would, instead, simply observe flesh being torn, like a piece of paper. | |
| From: report of René Descartes (Letters to Regius [1642], III:493) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 25.6 | |
| A reaction: Does that mean that the angel could not have the experience even if it wanted to have it. So they can't pick up a cup either? So they can't make themselves known to us, even if they are desperate to? So the Annunciation never happened? |