24 ideas
| 12442 | 'Mickey Mouse is a fictional mouse' is true without a truthmaker [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: 'Mickey Mouse is a fictional mouse' can be taken as true without have any truthmaker. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: There might be an equivocation over 'true' here. 'What, really really true that he IS a fictional mouse?' |
| 12439 | Truth is dispensable, by replacing truth claims with the sentence itself [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: No truth predicate is ever indispensable, because Tarski biconditionals, the equivalences between sentences and explicit truth ascriptions to those sentences, allow us to replace explicit truth ascriptions with the sentences themselves. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Holding a sentence to be true isn't the same as saying that it is true, and it isn't the same as saying the sentence, because one might say it in an ironic tone of voice. |
| 12437 | Truth lets us assent to sentences we can't explicitly exhibit [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: My take on truth is a fairly deflationary one: The role of the truth predicate is to enable us to assent to sentences we can't explicitly exhibit. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Clearly this is a role for truth, as in 'I forget what he said, but I know it was true', but it isn't remotely what most people understand by true. We use 'true' about totally explicit sentences all the time. |
| 12446 | Names function the same way, even if there is no object [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: Names function the same way (semantically and grammatically) regardless of whether or not there's an object that they refer to. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.3 n55) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a fairly clear rebuttal of the 'Fido'-Fido view of names (that the meaning of the name IS the dog), which never seems to quite go away. A name is a peg on which description may be hung, seems a good slogan to me. |
| 12447 | That all existents have causal powers is unknowable; the claim is simply an epistemic one [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: If the argument isn't that, metaphysically speaking, anything that exists must have causal powers - how on earth would we show that? - rather, the claim is an epistemic one. Any thing we're in a position to know about we must causally interact with. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: A very good point. I am attracted to causal power as a criterion for existence, but Azzouni's distinction is vital. Maybe there is just no point in even talking about things which exist but have no causal powers. |
| 12445 | If fictional objects really don't exist, then they aren't abstract objects [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: It's robustly part of common sense that fictional objects don't exist in any sense at all, and this means they aren't abstracta either. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Nice. It is so easy to have some philosopher dilute and equivocate over the word 'object' until you find yourself committed to all sorts of daft things as somehow having objectual existence. We can discuss things which don't exist in any way at all. |
| 12449 | Modern metaphysics often derives ontology from the logical forms of sentences [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: It is widespread in contemporary metaphysics to extract commitments to various types of object on the basis of the logical form of certain sentences. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: I'm with Azzouni in thinking that this procedure is a very bad idea. I'm increasingly inclined towards the wild view that people are only ontologically committed to things if they explicitly say that they are so committed. |
| 12440 | If objectual quantifiers ontologically commit, so does the metalanguage for its semantics [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: The argument that objectual quantifiers are ontologically committing has the crucial and unnoticed presupposition that the language in which the semantics for the objectual quantifiers is couched (the 'metalanguage') also has quantifiers with commitment. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: That is, presumably we find ourselves ontologically committed to the existence of quantifiers, and are also looking at an infinite regress. See Idea 12439. |
| 12438 | In the vernacular there is no unequivocal ontological commitment [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: There are no linguistic devices, no idioms (not 'there is', not 'exists') that unequivocally indicate ontological commitment in the vernacular. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, since people talk in such ways about soap opera, while understanding the ontological situation perfectly well. Presumably Quine is seeking higher standards than the vernacular, if we are doing science. |
| 12441 | We only get ontology from semantics if we have already smuggled it in [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: A slogan: One can't read ontological commitments from semantic conditions unless one has already smuggled into those semantic conditions the ontology one would like to read off. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: The arguments supporting this are subtle, but it's good enough for me, as I never thought anyone was ontologically committed just because they used the vagueries of language to try to say what's going on around here. |
| 12448 | Things that don't exist don't have any properties [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: Things that don't exist don't have any properties. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Sounds reasonable! I totally agree, but that is because my notion of properties is sparse and naturalistic. If you identify properties with predicates (which some weird people seem to), then non-existents can have properties like 'absence' or 'nullity'. |
| 20429 | Most of us are too close to our own motives to understand them [Fry] |
| Full Idea: The motives we actually experience are too close to us to enable us to feel them clearly. They are in a sense unintelligible. | |
| From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.30) | |
| A reaction: Fry is defending the role of art in clarifying and highlighting such things, but I am not convinced by his claim. We can grasp most of our motives with a little introspection, and those we can't grasp are probably too subtle for art as well. |
| 20424 | Imaginative life requires no action, so new kinds of perception and values emerge in art [Fry] |
| Full Idea: In the imaginative life no action is necessary, so the whole consciousness may be focused upon the perceptive and the emotional aspects of the experience. Hence we get a different set of values, and a different kind of perception | |
| From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.24) | |
| A reaction: Good. A huge range of human activities are like scientific experiments, where you draw on our evolved faculties, but put them in controlled conditions, where the less convenient and stressful parts are absent. War and sport. Real and theatrical tragedy. |
| 20427 | Everyone reveals an aesthetic attitude, looking at something which only exists to be seen [Fry] |
| Full Idea: It is only when an object exists for no other purpose than to be seen that we really look at it, …and then even the most normal person adopts to some extent the artistic attitude of pure vision abstracted from necessity. | |
| From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.29) | |
| A reaction: A painter of still life looks at things which exist for other purposes, with just the attitude which Fry attributes to the viewers of the paintings. We can encourage a child to look at a flower with just this attitude. |
| 20433 | 'Beauty' can either mean sensuous charm, or the aesthetic approval of art (which may be ugly) [Fry] |
| Full Idea: There is an apparent contradiction between two distinct uses of the word 'beauty', one for that which has sensuous charm, and one for the aesthetic approval of works of imaginative art where the objects presented to us are often of extreme ugliness. | |
| From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.33) | |
| A reaction: The gouging of eyes in 'King Lear' was always the big problem case for aesthetics, just as nowadays it is Marcel Duchamp's wretched 'Fountain'. |
| 20430 | In life we neglect 'cosmic emotion', but it matters, and art brings it to the fore [Fry] |
| Full Idea: Those feelings unhappily named cosmic emotion find almost no place in life, but, since they seem to belong to certain very deep springs of our nature, do become of great importance in the arts. | |
| From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.31) | |
| A reaction: Focus on the sublime was big in the romantic era, but Fry still sees its importance, and I don't think it ever goes away. Art styles which scorn the sublime are failing to perform their social duty, say I. |
| 20431 | Art needs a mixture of order and variety in its sensations [Fry] |
| Full Idea: The first quality that we demand in our [artistic] sensations will be order, without which our sensations will be troubled and perplexed, and the other will be variety, without which they will not be fully stimulated. | |
| From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.32) | |
| A reaction: He makes good claims, but gives unconvincing reasons for them. Some of us rather like 'troubled and perplexed' sensations. And a very narrow range of sensations could still be highly stimulated. Is Fry a good aesthetician but a modest philosopher? |
| 20423 | If graphic arts only aim at imitation, their works are only trivial ingenious toys [Fry] |
| Full Idea: If imitation is the sole purpose of the graphic arts, it is surprising that the works of such arts are ever looked upon as more than curiosities, or ingenious toys, and are ever taken seriously by grown-up people. | |
| From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.23) | |
| A reaction: But then you might say that same about fine wines. A mere nice taste is hardly worthy of grown ups, and yet lots of grown ups feeling quite passionately about it. What about Fabergé eggs? |
| 20428 | Popular opinion favours realism, yet most people never look closely at anything! [Fry] |
| Full Idea: Ordinary people have almost no idea of what things really look like, so that the one standard that popular criticism applies to painting (whether it is like nature or not) is the one which most people are prevented frm applying properly. | |
| From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.29) | |
| A reaction: A nice remark, though there is a streak of Bloomsbury artistic snobbery running through Fry. Ordinary people recognise photographic realism, so they can study things closely either in the reality or the picture, should they so choose. |
| 20432 | When viewing art, rather than flowers, we are aware of purpose, and sympathy with its creator [Fry] |
| Full Idea: In our reaction to a work of art (rather than a flower) there is the consciousness of purpose, of a peculiar relation of sympathy with the man who made this thing in order to arouse precisely the sensations we experience. | |
| From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.33) | |
| A reaction: I think this is entirely right. I like the mention of 'sympathy' as well as 'purpose'. |
| 20425 | In the cinema the emotions are weaker, but much clearer than in ordinary life [Fry] |
| Full Idea: One notices in the visions of the cinematograph that whatever emotions are aroused by them, though they are likely to be weaker than those of ordinary life, are presented more clearly to the conscious. | |
| From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.25) | |
| A reaction: Fry had probably only seen very simple melodramas, but the general idea that artistic emotions are weaker than real life, but much clearer, is quite plausible. |
| 20426 | For pure moralists art must promote right action, and not just be harmless [Fry] |
| Full Idea: To the pure moralist, accepting nothing but ethical values, to be justified, the life of the imagination must be shown not only not to hinder but actually to forward right action, otherwise it is not only useless but, by absorbing energies, harmful. | |
| From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.26) | |
| A reaction: I think this is the sort of attitude you find in Samuel Johnson. Puritans even reject light music, which seems pleasantly harmless to the rest of us. 'Absorbing energies' doesn't sound much of an objection, and may not be the actual objection. |
| 6005 | Animals are dangerous and nourishing, and can't form contracts of justice [Hermarchus, by Sedley] |
| Full Idea: Hermarchus said that animal killing is justified by considerations of human safety and nourishment and by animals' inability to form contractual relations of justice with us. | |
| From: report of Hermarchus (fragments/reports [c.270 BCE]) by David A. Sedley - Hermarchus | |
| A reaction: Could the last argument be used to justify torturing animals? Or could we eat a human who was too brain-damaged to form contracts? |
| 12450 | The periodic table not only defines the elements, but also excludes other possible elements [Azzouni] |
| Full Idea: The periodic table not only governs what elements there can be, with their properties, but also explicitly excludes others sorts of elements, because the elements are individuated by the number of discrete protons in their nuclei. | |
| From: Jody Azzouni (Deflating Existential Consequence [2004], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: It has to be central to the thesis of scientific essentialism that the possibilities in nature are far more restricted than is normally thought, and this observation illustrates the view nicely. He makes a similar point about subatomic particles. |