19 ideas
| 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) |
| 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. |
| 16616 | Substances 'substand' (beneath accidents), or 'subsist' (independently) [Eustachius] |
| Full Idea: It is proper to substance both to stretch out or exist beneath accidents, which is to substand, and to exist per se and not in another, which is to subsist. | |
| From: Eustachius a Sancto Paulo (Summa [1609], I.1.3b.1.2), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 06.2 | |
| A reaction: This reflects Aristotle wavering between 'ousia' being the whole of a thing, or the substrate of a thing. In current discussion, 'substance' still wavers between a thing which 'is' a substance, and substance being the essence. |
| 16585 | Prime matter is free of all forms, but has the potential for all forms [Eustachius] |
| Full Idea: Everyone says that prime matter, considered in itself, is free of all forms and at the same time is open to all forms - or, that matter is in potentiality to all forms. | |
| From: Eustachius a Sancto Paulo (Summa [1609], III.1.1.2.3), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 03.1 | |
| A reaction: This is the notorious doctrine developed to support the hylomorphic picture derived from Aristotle. No one could quite figure out what prime matter was, so it faded away. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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). |