32 ideas
21970 | Philosophy attains its goal if one person feels perfect accord between their system and experience [Fichte] |
Full Idea: If even a single person is completely convinced of his philosophy; ...if his free judgement in philosophising, and what life obtrudes upon him, are perfectly in accord; then in this person philosophy has completed its circuit and attained its goal. | |
From: Johann Fichte (works [1798], I:512), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 06.4 | |
A reaction: Interesting to hear a famous idealist offering accordance with real life as a criterion for philosophical success. But that is real life, but not as you and I may know it.... His criterion is very subjective. A bad philosopher might attain it? |
6912 | For Fichte there is no God outside the ego, and 'our religion is reason' [Fichte, by Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: For Fichte there is no God outside the ego, and 'our religion is reason'. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (works [1798]) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §17 | |
A reaction: Fichte was not an atheist, but this seems to be a supreme aphorism for summarising our image of the Englightenment. Personally I subscribe to the Enlightenment ideal (the best life is the rational life), despite doubts about 'pure' reason. |
18486 | We might define truth as arising from the truth-maker relation [MacBride] |
Full Idea: We might define truth using the truth-maker relation, albeit in a roundabout way, according to the pattern of saying 'S is true' is equivalent to 'there is something which makes S true'. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.3) | |
A reaction: [MacBride gives it more algebraically, but I prefer English!] You would need to explain 'truth-making' without reference to truth. Horwich objects, reasonably, that ordinary people grasp 'truth' much more clearly than 'truth-making'. Bad idea, I think. |
18484 | Phenomenalists, behaviourists and presentists can't supply credible truth-makers [MacBride] |
Full Idea: For Martin the fatal error of phenomenalists was their inability to supply credible truth-makers for truths about unobserved objects; the same error afflicted Ryle's behaviourism, ...and Prior's Presentism (for past-tensed and future-tensed truths). | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.1) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the original motivation for the modern rise of the truthmaker idea. Personally I find 'Napoleon won at Austerlitz' is a perfectly good past-tensed truthmaker which is compatible with presentism. Truth-making is an excellent challenge. |
18466 | If truthmaking is classical entailment, then anything whatsoever makes a necessary truth [MacBride] |
Full Idea: If a truthmaker entails its truth, this threatens to over-generate truth-makers for necessary truths - at least if the entailment is classical. It's a feature of this notion that anything whatsoever entails a given necessary truth. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 1.1) | |
A reaction: This is a good reason to think that the truth-making relation does not consist of logical entailment. |
18473 | 'Maximalism' says every truth has an actual truthmaker [MacBride] |
Full Idea: The principle of 'maximalism' is that for every truth, then there must be something in the world that makes it true. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1) | |
A reaction: That seems to mean that no truths can be uttered about anything which is not in the world. If I say 'pigs might have flown', that isn't about the modal profile of actual pigs, it is about what might have resulted from that profile. |
18481 | Maximalism follows Russell, and optimalism (no negative or universal truthmakers) follows Wittgenstein [MacBride] |
Full Idea: If maximalism is intellectual heir to Russell's logical atomism, then 'optimalism' (the denial that universal and negative statements need truth-makers) is heir to Wittgenstein's version, where only atomic propositions represent states of affairs. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.2) | |
A reaction: Wittgenstein's idea is that you can use the logical connectives to construct all the other universal and negative facts. 'Optimalism' restricts truthmaking to atomic statements. |
18483 | The main idea of truth-making is that what a proposition is about is what matters [MacBride] |
Full Idea: According the Lewis, the kernel of truth in truth-making is the idea that propositions have a subject matter. They are about things, so whether they are true or false depends on how those things stand. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.4.1) | |
A reaction: [Lewis 'Things Qua Truth-makers' 2003] That sounds like the first step in the story, rather than the 'kernel' of the truth-making approach. |
18479 | There are different types of truthmakers for different types of negative truth [MacBride] |
Full Idea: We recognise that what makes it true that there is no oil in this engine is different from what makes it true that there are no dodos left. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.4.1) | |
A reaction: This looks like a local particular negation up against a universal negation. I'm not sure there is a big difference between 'my dodo's gone missing' (like my oil), and 'all the dodos have gone permanently missing'. |
18477 | There aren't enough positive states out there to support all the negative truths [MacBride] |
Full Idea: It's not obvious that there are enough positive states out there to underwrite all the negative truths. Even though it may be true that this liquid is odourless this needn't be because there's something further about it that excludes its being odourless. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.4.1) | |
A reaction: What is the ontological status of all these hypothetical truths? What is the truthmaker for 'a trillion trillion negative truths exist'? What is the status of 'this is not not-red'? |
18482 | Optimalists say that negative and universal are true 'by default' from the positive truths [MacBride] |
Full Idea: Optimalists say that negative truths are 'true by default' (having the opposite truth value of p), and universal truths are too. Universal truths are equivalent to negative existential truths, which are true by default. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.2) | |
A reaction: The background idea is Wittgenstein's, that if p is false, then not-p is true by default, without anyone having to assert the negation. This strikes me as a very promising approach to truthmaking. See Simons 2008. |
18474 | Does 'this sentence has no truth-maker' have a truth-maker? Reductio suggests it can't have [MacBride] |
Full Idea: If the sentence 'This sentence has no truth-maker' has a truth-maker, then it must be true. But then what it says must be the case, so it has no truth-maker. Hence by reductio the sentence has no truth-maker. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.1) | |
A reaction: [Argument proposed by Peter Milne 2005] Rodriguez-Pereyra replies that the sentence is meaningless, so that it can't possibly be true. The Liar sentence is also said to be meaningless. The argument opposes Maximalism. |
18485 | Even idealists could accept truthmakers, as mind-dependent [MacBride] |
Full Idea: Even an idealist could accept that there are truth-makers whilst thinking of them as mind-dependent entities. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.1) | |
A reaction: This undercuts anyone (me, perhaps?) who was hoping to prop up their robust realism with an angry demand to be shown the truthmakers. |
18490 | Maybe 'makes true' is not an active verb, but just a formal connective like 'because'? [MacBride] |
Full Idea: Maybe the truth-maker panegyrists have misconstrued the logical form of 'makes true'. They have taken it to be a verb like 'x hits y', when really it is akin to the connective '→' or 'because'. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.7) | |
A reaction: [He cites Melia 2005] This isn't any sort of refutation of truth-making, but an offer of how to think of the phenomenon if you reject the big principle. I like truth-making, but resist the 'makes' that brings unthought propositions into existence. |
18493 | Truthmaker talk of 'something' making sentences true, which presupposes objectual quantification [MacBride] |
Full Idea: When supporters of truth-making talk of 'something' which makes a sentence true, they make the assumption that it is an objectual quantifier in name position. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.8) | |
A reaction: We might say, more concisely, that they are 'reifying' the something. This makes it sound as if Armstrong and Bigelow have made a mistake, but that are simply asserting that this particular quantification is indeed objectual. |
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. |
18489 | Connectives link sentences without linking their meanings [MacBride] |
Full Idea: The 'connectives' are expressions that link sentences but without expressing a relation that holds between the states of affairs, facts or tropes that these sentences denote. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 3.7) | |
A reaction: MacBride notes that these contrast with ordinary verbs, which do express meaningful relations. |
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. |
18476 | 'A is F' may not be positive ('is dead'), and 'A is not-F' may not be negative ('is not blind') [MacBride] |
Full Idea: Statements of the form 'a is F' aren't invariably positive ('a is dead'), and nor are statements of the form 'a isn't F' ('a isn't blind') always negative. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.4) | |
A reaction: The point is that the negation may be implicit in the predicate. There are many ways to affirm or deny something, other than by use of the standard syntax. |
18480 | Maybe it only exists if it is a truthmaker (rather than the value of a variable)? [MacBride] |
Full Idea: 'To be is to be a truth-maker' has been proposed as a replacement the standard conception of ontological commitment, that to be is to be the value of a variable. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.4.2) | |
A reaction: [He cites Ross Cameron 2008] Unconvincing. What does it mean to say that some remote unexperienced bit of the universe 'makes truths'? How many truths? Where do these truths reside when they aren't doing anything useful? |
18471 | Different types of 'grounding' seem to have no more than a family resemblance relation [MacBride] |
Full Idea: The concept of 'grounding' appears to cry out for treatment as a family resemblance concept, a concept whose instances have no more in common than different games do. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 1.6) | |
A reaction: I like the word 'determinations', though MacBride's point my also apply to that. I take causation to be one species of determination, and truth-making to be another. They form a real family, with no adoptees. |
18472 | Which has priority - 'grounding' or 'truth-making'? [MacBride] |
Full Idea: Some philosophers define 'grounding' in terms of 'truth-making', rather than the other way around. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 1.6) | |
A reaction: [Cameron exemplifies the first, and Schaffer the second] I would have thought that grounding was in the world, but truth-making required the introduction of propositions about the world by minds, so grounding is prior. Schaffer is right. |
18475 | Russell allows some complex facts, but Wittgenstein only allows atomic facts [MacBride] |
Full Idea: The logical atomism of Russell admitted some logically complex facts but not others - in contrast to Wittgenstein's version which admitted only atomic facts. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.3) | |
A reaction: For truthmakers, it looks as if the Wittgenstein version might do a better job (e.g. with negative truths). I quite like the Russell approach, where complex facts underwrite the logical connectives. Disjunctive, negative, conjunctive, hypothetical facts. |
18478 | Wittgenstein's plan to show there is only logical necessity failed, because of colours [MacBride] |
Full Idea: It is almost universally acknowledged that Wittgenstein's plan to show all necessity is logical necessity ended in failure - indeed foundered upon the very problem of explaining colour incompatibilities. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 2.1.4.1) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure whether you can 'show' that colour incompatibility is some sort of necessity, though intuitively it seems so. I'm thinking that 'necessity' is a unitary concept, with a wide variety of sources generating it. |
21973 | Fichte believed in things-in-themselves [Fichte, by Moore,AW] |
Full Idea: Fichte retained a broadly Kantian conception of how things are in themselves. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (works [1798]) by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.2 | |
A reaction: The contrast is between those who believe in the thing-in-itself, while admitting that we can't know it, and those who deny such a thing. The debate returned 130 years later as verificationism in language. |
21914 | We can deduce experience from self-consciousness, without the thing-in-itself [Fichte] |
Full Idea: We can abandon the thing-in-itself, and aim for 'a complete deduction of all experience from the possibility of self-consciousness'. | |
From: Johann Fichte (works [1798], I p.425), quoted by Peter B. Lewis - Schopenhauer 3 | |
A reaction: German Idealism now looks to me like a weird abberation in the history of philosophy, though no doubt it has (like every philosophical theory) some supporters out there somewhere. Schopenhauer called this 'raving nonsense'. |
20951 | The absolute I divides into consciousness, and a world which is not-I [Fichte, by Bowie] |
Full Idea: Fichte's very influential idea is that the subject becomes divided against itself. The absolute I splits into an I (consciousness) and a not-I (the objective world) that are relative to each other. | |
From: report of Johann Fichte (works [1798]) by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy 3 'Fichtean' | |
A reaction: This is German Idealism in action. Is there a before and after the split here? I can't make much sense of this idea. It is said that babies spend a while deciding which bits are them and which aren't. There is more to the world than 'not-I'. |
21964 | Reason arises from freedom, so philosophy starts from the self, and not from the laws of nature [Fichte] |
Full Idea: Not by any law of nature do we attain to reason; we achieve it by absolute freedom. ...In philosophy, therefore, we must necessarily start from the self. The materialists' project of deriving the appearance of reason from natural laws is impossible. | |
From: Johann Fichte (works [1798], I:298), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics | |
A reaction: I blame Descartes' Cogito for this misunderstanding. The underlying idea (in Kant, and probably earlier) is that pure reason needs pure free will. Modern thought usually sees reason as extremely impure. |
21968 | Abandon the thing-in-itself; things only exist in relation to our thinking [Fichte] |
Full Idea: We must be rid of the thing-in-itself; for whatever we may think, we are that which thinks therein, and hence nothing could ever come to exist independently of us, for everything is necessarily related to our thinking. | |
From: Johann Fichte (works [1798], I:501), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 06.3 | |
A reaction: Some statements of idealism are understandable, or even quite plausible, but this one sounds ridiculous. The idea that if human beings die out then reality ceases to exist is absurd humanistic vanity. |
21965 | Spinoza could not actually believe his determinism, because living requires free will [Fichte] |
Full Idea: Spinoza could only think his philosophy, not believe it, for it stood in immediate contradiction to his necessary conviction in daily life, whereby he was bound to regard himself as free and independent. | |
From: Johann Fichte (works [1798], I:513), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 06.2 | |
A reaction: This seems to be invoking Kant's idea that we must presuppose free will, rather than an assertion that we actually have it. |
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). |