32 ideas
2352 | The job of the philosopher is to distinguish facts about the world from conventions [Putnam] |
18261 | A simplification which is complete constitutes a definition [Kant] |
2345 | Semantic notions do not occur in Tarski's definitions, but assessing their correctness involves translation [Putnam] |
2347 | Asserting the truth of an indexical statement is not the same as uttering the statement [Putnam] |
22275 | Logic gives us the necessary rules which show us how we ought to think [Kant] |
1630 | We can only see an alien language in terms of our own thought structures (e.g. physical/abstract) [Quine] |
2349 | Realists believe truth is correspondence, independent of humans, is bivalent, and is unique [Putnam] |
5747 | "No entity without identity" - our ontology must contain items with settled identity conditions [Quine, by Melia] |
7925 | There is no proper identity concept for properties, and it is hard to distinguish one from two [Quine] |
2351 | Aristotle says an object (e.g. a lamp) has identity if its parts stay together when it is moved [Putnam] |
13387 | Our conceptual scheme becomes more powerful when we posit abstract objects [Quine] |
8277 | I prefer 'no object without identity' to Quine's 'no entity without identity' [Lowe on Quine] |
18260 | If we knew what we know, we would be astonished [Kant] |
2331 | Functionalism says robots and people are the same at one level of abstraction [Putnam] |
2071 | If concepts have external meaning, computational states won't explain psychology [Putnam] |
2332 | Functionalism can't explain reference and truth, which are needed for logic [Putnam] |
2348 | Is there just one computational state for each specific belief? [Putnam] |
2344 | If we are going to eliminate folk psychology, we must also eliminate folk logic [Putnam] |
2074 | Can we give a scientific, computational account of folk psychology? [Putnam] |
2343 | Reference may be different while mental representation is the same [Putnam] |
2346 | Meaning and translation (which are needed to define truth) both presuppose the notion of reference [Putnam] |
2354 | "Meaning is use" is not a definition of meaning [Putnam] |
2336 | Holism seems to make fixed definition more or less impossible [Putnam] |
2334 | Meaning holism tried to show that you can't get fixed meanings built out of observation terms [Putnam] |
2335 | Understanding a sentence involves background knowledge and can't be done in isolation [Putnam] |
2340 | We should separate how the reference of 'gold' is fixed from its conceptual content [Putnam] |
2341 | Like names, natural kind terms have their meaning fixed by extension and reference [Putnam] |
2338 | Reference (say to 'elms') is a social phenomenon which we can leave to experts [Putnam] |
2339 | Aristotle implies that we have the complete concepts of a language in our heads, but we don't [Putnam] |
1631 | You could know the complete behavioural conditions for a foreign language, and still not know their beliefs [Quine] |
1632 | Translation of our remote past or language could be as problematic as alien languages [Quine] |
2342 | "Water" is a natural kind term, but "H2O" is a description [Putnam] |