11 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. |
| 8495 | The distinction between particulars and universals is a mistake made because of language [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: The whole theory of particulars and universals is due to mistaking for a fundamental characteristic of reality what is merely a characteristic of language. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Universals [1925], p.13) | |
| A reaction: [Fraser MacBride has pursued this idea] It is rather difficult to deny the existence of particulars, in the sense of actual objects, so this appears to make Ramsey a straightforward nominalist, of some sort or other. |
| 8493 | We could make universals collections of particulars, or particulars collections of their qualities [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: The two obvious methods of abolishing the distinction between particulars and universals are by holding either that universals are collections of particulars, or that particulars are collections of their qualities. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Universals [1925], p.8) | |
| A reaction: Ramsey proposes an error theory, arising out of language. Quine seems to offer another attempt, making objects and predication unanalysable and basic. Abstract reference seems to make the strongest claim to separate out the universals. |
| 8494 | Obviously 'Socrates is wise' and 'Socrates has wisdom' express the same fact [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me as clear as anything can be in philosophy that the two sentences 'Socrates is wise' and 'wisdom is a characteristic of Socrates' assert the same fact and express the same proposition. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Universals [1925], p.12) | |
| A reaction: Could be challenged. One says Socrates is just the way he is, the other says he is attached to an abstract entity greater than himself. The squabble over universals has become a squabble over logical form. Finding logical form needs metaphysics! |
| 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). |
| 8404 | Explain single events by general rules, or vice versa, or probability explains both, or they are unconnected [Field,H] |
| Full Idea: Some think singular causal claims should be explained in terms of general causal claims; some think the order should be reversed; some think a third thing (e.g. objective probability) will explain both; and some think they are only loosely connected. | |
| From: Hartry Field (Causation in a Physical World [2003], 2) | |
| A reaction: I think Ducasse gives the best account, which is the second option, of giving singular causal claims priority. Probability (Mellor) strikes me as a non-starter, and the idea that they are fairly independent seems rather implausible. |
| 8401 | Physical laws are largely time-symmetric, so they make a poor basis for directional causation [Field,H] |
| Full Idea: It is sometimes pointed out that (perhaps with a few minor exceptions) the fundamental physical laws are completely time-symmetric. If so, then if one is inclined to found causation on fundamental physical law, it isn't evident how directionality gets in. | |
| From: Hartry Field (Causation in a Physical World [2003], 1) | |
| A reaction: All my instincts tell me that causation is more fundamental than laws, and that directionality is there at the start. That, though, raises the nice question of how, if causation explains laws, the direction eventually gets left OUT! |
| 8400 | Identifying cause and effect is not just conventional; we explain later events by earlier ones [Field,H] |
| Full Idea: It is not just that the earlier member of a cause-effect pair is conventionally called the cause; it is also connected with other temporal asymmetries that play an important role in our practices. We tend to explain later events in terms of earlier ones. | |
| From: Hartry Field (Causation in a Physical World [2003], 1) | |
| A reaction: We also interfere with the earlier one to affect the later one, and not vice versa (Idea 8363). I am inclined to think that attempting to explain the direction of causation is either pointless or hopeless. |
| 8402 | The only reason for adding the notion of 'cause' to fundamental physics is directionality [Field,H] |
| Full Idea: Although it is true that the notion of 'cause' is not needed in fundamental physics, even statistical physics, still directionality considerations don't preclude this notion from being consistently added to fundamental physics. | |
| From: Hartry Field (Causation in a Physical World [2003], 1) | |
| A reaction: This only makes sense if the notion of cause already has directionality built into it, which I think is correct. The physicist might reply that they don't care about directionality, but the whole idea of an experiment seems to depend on it (Idea 8363). |