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All the ideas for '', 'The Human Animal' and 'Scientific Thought'

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11 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 1. Overview of Logic

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.

5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 2. Logical Connectives / a. Logical connectives

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.

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 4. Four-Dimensionalism

14759	A thing is simply a long event, linked by qualities, and spatio-temporal unity [Broad]
	Full Idea: A thing is simply a long event, throughout the course of which there is either qualitative similarity or continuous qualitative change, together with a characteristic spatio-temporal unity.
	From: C.D. Broad (Scientific Thought [1923], 10 'Duration')
	A reaction: At least he is trying to give some sort of principle that links the stages of the event together.

11842	If short-lived happenings like car crashes are 'events', why not long-lived events like Dover Cliffs? [Broad]
	Full Idea: We call a lightning flash or a motor accident an event, but refuse to apply this to the cliffs of Dover. ...But quantitative differences (of time) give no good grounds for calling one bit of history an event, and refusing the name to another bit.
	From: C.D. Broad (Scientific Thought [1923], p.54), quoted by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance Renewed 2.3 n13
	A reaction: Wiggins calls this proposal a 'terrible absurdity', but it seems to me to demand attention. There is a case to be made for a 'process' to be the fundamental category of our ontology, with stable physical objects seen in that light.

16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 7. Self and Body / a. Self needs body

16236	Maybe our persistence conditions concern bodies, rather than persons [Olson, by Hawley]
	Full Idea: Instead of attributing person-like persistence conditions to bodies, we could attribute body-like persistence conditions to persons, …so human persons are identical with human organisms.
	From: report of Eric T. Olson (The Human Animal [1997]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 5.10
	A reaction: In the case of pre-birth and advanced senility, Olson thinks we could have the body without the person, so person is a 'phase sortal' of bodies. A good theory, which seems to answer a lot of questions. 'Person' may be an abstraction.

6669	For 'animalism', I exist before I became a person, and can continue after it, so I am not a person [Olson, by Lowe]
	Full Idea: According to 'animalism', I existed before I was a person and I may well go one existing for some time after I cease to be a person; hence, I am not essentially a person, but a human organism.
	From: report of Eric T. Olson (The Human Animal [1997]) by E.J. Lowe - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind Ch.10
	A reaction: There is a very real sense in which an extremely senile person has 'ceased to exist' (e.g. as the person I used to love). On the whole, though, I think that Olson is right, and yet 'person' is an important concept. Neither concept is all-or-nothing.

19. Language / F. Communication / 3. Denial

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).

27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / g. Growing block

8160	The present and past exist, but the future does not [Broad, by Dummett]
	Full Idea: Not only the present but also the past exist, but the future (so long as it is the future) does not.
	From: report of C.D. Broad (Scientific Thought [1923]) by Michael Dummett - Thought and Reality 1
	A reaction: This is quite appealing, and seems right if you believe that every truth has a truthmaker, and that there are no truths about the future. And yet the whole misery of people dying is that they cease to exist.

14609	We could say present and past exist, but not future, so that each event adds to the total history [Broad]
	Full Idea: One theory accepts the reality of the present and the past, but holds that the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world.
	From: C.D. Broad (Scientific Thought [1923], II)
	A reaction: This is now known as Broad's 'Growing Block' view of time. It is tempting to say that neither past nor future exist, but it seems undeniable that statements about the past can be wholly true, unlike those about the future.

27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / d. Time series

22933	We imagine the present as a spotlight, moving across events from past to future [Broad]
	Full Idea: We imagine presentness moving, like the spot of light from a policeman's bulls eye traversing the fronts of houses in a street. What is illuminated is present, what was illuminated is past, and what is not yet illuminated is the future.
	From: C.D. Broad (Scientific Thought [1923], II)
	A reaction: This is the 'moving spotlight' compromise theory, which retains the B-series eternal sequence of ordered events, but adds the A-series privileged present moment. Le Poidevin says Broad represents time twice over.