16 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. |
12797 | If plural variables have 'some values', then non-count variables have 'some value' [Laycock] |
Full Idea: If a plural variable is said to have not a single value but some values (some clothes), then a non-count variable may have, more quirkier still, some value (some clothing, for instance) in ranging arbitrarily over the scattered stuff. | |
From: Henry Laycock (Words without Objects [2006], 4.4) | |
A reaction: We seem to need the notion of a sample, or an archetype, to fit the bill. I hereby name them 'sample variables'. Damn - Laycock got there first, on p.137. |
12794 | Plurals are semantical but not ontological [Laycock] |
Full Idea: Plurality is a semantical but not also an ontological construction. | |
From: Henry Laycock (Words without Objects [2006], Intro 4) | |
A reaction: I love it when philososphers make simple and illuminating remarks like this. You could read 500 pages of technical verbiage about plural reference without grasping that this is the underlying issue. Sounds right to me. |
17694 | Some non-count nouns can be used for counting, as in 'several wines' or 'fewer cheeses' [Laycock] |
Full Idea: The very words we class as non-count nouns may themselves be used for counting, of kinds or types, and phrases like 'several wines' are perfectly in order. ...Not only do we have 'less cheese', but we also have the non-generic 'fewer cheeses'. | |
From: Henry Laycock (Words without Objects [2006], Intro 4 n23) | |
A reaction: [compressed] Laycock generally endorses the thought that what can be counted is not simply distinguished by a precise class of applied vocabulary. He offers lots of borderline or ambiguous cases in his footnotes. |
17695 | Some apparent non-count words can take plural forms, such as 'snows' or 'waters' [Laycock] |
Full Idea: Some words that seem to be semantically non-count can take syntactically plural forms: 'snows', 'sands', 'waters' and the like. | |
From: Henry Laycock (Words without Objects [2006], Intro 4 n24) | |
A reaction: This seems to involve parcels of the stuff. The 'snows of yesteryear' occur at different times. 'Taking the waters' probably involves occasions. The 'Arabian sands' presumably occur in different areas. Semantics won't fix what is countable. |
12792 | The category of stuff does not suit reference [Laycock] |
Full Idea: The central fact about the category of stuff or matter is that it is profoundly antithetical to reference. | |
From: Henry Laycock (Words without Objects [2006], Pref) | |
A reaction: This is taking 'reference' in the strictly singular classical sense, but clearly we refer to water in various ways. Laycock's challenge is very helpful. We have been in the grips of a terrible orthodoxy. |
12799 | Descriptions of stuff are neither singular aggregates nor plural collections [Laycock] |
Full Idea: The definite descriptions of stuff like water are neither singular descriptions denoting individual mereological aggregates, nor plural descriptions denoting multitudes of discrete units or semantically determined atoms. | |
From: Henry Laycock (Words without Objects [2006], 5.3) | |
A reaction: Laycock makes an excellent case for this claim, and seems to invite a considerable rethink of our basic ontology to match it, one which he ultimately hints at calling 'romantic'. Nice. Conservatives try to force stuff into classical moulds. |
12818 | We shouldn't think some water retains its identity when it is mixed with air [Laycock] |
Full Idea: Suppose that water, qua vapour, mixes with the atmosphere. Is there any abstract metaphysical principle, other than that of atomism, which implies that water must, in any such process, retain its identity? That claim seems indefensible. | |
From: Henry Laycock (Words without Objects [2006], 1.2 n22) | |
A reaction: It can't be right that some stuff always loses its identity in a mixture, if the mixture was in a closed vessel, and then separated again. Dispersion is what destroys the identity, not mixing. |
12795 | Parts must be of the same very general type as the wholes [Laycock] |
Full Idea: The notion of a part is such that parts must be of the same very general type - concrete, material or physical, for instance - as the wholes of which they are (said to be) parts. | |
From: Henry Laycock (Words without Objects [2006], 2.9) | |
A reaction: The phrase 'same very general type' cries out for investigation. Can an army contain someone who isn't much of a soldier? Can the Treasury contain a fear of inflation? |
17696 | 'Humility is a virtue' has an abstract noun, but 'water is a liquid' has a generic concrete noun [Laycock] |
Full Idea: Work is needed to distinguish abstract nouns ...from the generic uses of what are otherwise concrete nouns. The contrast is that of 'humility is a virtue' and 'water is a liquid'. | |
From: Henry Laycock (Words without Objects [2006], Intro 4 n25) | |
A reaction: 'Work is needed' implies 'let me through, I'm an analytic philosopher', but I don't think they will separate very easily. What does 'watery' mean? Does water have concrete virtues? |
12791 | It is said that proper reference is our intellectual link with the world [Laycock] |
Full Idea: Some people hold that it is reference, in some more or less full-blooded sense, which constitutes our basic intellectual or psychological connection with the world. | |
From: Henry Laycock (Words without Objects [2006], Pref) | |
A reaction: This is the view which Laycock sets out to challenge, by showing that we talk about stuff like water without any singular reference occurring at all. I think he is probably right. |
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). |
7071 | Life and rationality are pointless if we can only contemplate the freedom of our own ego [Jacobi] |
Full Idea: If the highest upon which I can reflect, what I can contemplate, is my empty and pure, naked and mere ego, with its autonomy and freedom: then rational self-contemplation, then rationality is for me a curse - I deplore my existence. | |
From: Friedrich Jacobi (Letters to Fichte [1799], Ch.2), quoted by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro | |
A reaction: This is a rebellion against Fichte's interpretation of Kant. It is a lovely cry from the heart on behalf of everyone who resents lines of philosophical thinking that seem to imprison the mind and cut us off from the ordinary world and real life. |
7072 | Jacobi was the first philosopher to talk of nihilism [Jacobi, by Critchley] |
Full Idea: Jacobi was the first to philosophically employ the concept of nihilism. | |
From: report of Friedrich Jacobi (Letters to Fichte [1799]) by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro Ch.2 | |
A reaction: Critchley explains that it was Jacobi's fear that Fichte was drawing nihilist conclusions from Kant's philosophy. This fear may be seen as the beginning of what is loosely called 'continental philosophy'. A worthy subject for thinkers... |