28 ideas
10405 | In the iterative conception of sets, they form a natural hierarchy [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: In the iterative conception of sets, they form a natural hierarchy. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.1) |
10407 | Logical Form explains differing logical behaviour of similar sentences [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: 'Logical Form' is a technical notion motivated by the observation that sentences with a similar surface structure may exhibit quite different logical behaviour. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: [Swoyer goes on to give some nice examples] The tricky question is whether each sentence has ONE logical form. Pragmatics warns us of the dangers. One needs to check numerous inferences from a given sentences, not just one. |
10421 | Supervenience is nowadays seen as between properties, rather than linguistic [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Supervenience is sometimes taken to be a relationship between two fragments of language, but it is increasingly taken to be a relationship between pairs of families of properties. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 7.17) | |
A reaction: If supervenience is a feature of the world, rather than of our descriptions, then it cries out for explanation, just as any other regularities do. Personally I would have thought the best explanation of the supervenience of mind and body was obvious. |
10410 | Anti-realists can't explain different methods to measure distance [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Anti-realists theories of measurement (like operationalism) cannot explain how we can use different methods to measure the same thing (e.g. lengths and distances in cosmology, geology, histology and atomic physics). | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: Swoyer says that the explanation is that measurement aims at objective properties, the same in each of these areas. Quite good. |
10399 | If a property such as self-identity can only be in one thing, it can't be a universal [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Some properties may not be universals, if they can only be exemplified by one thing, such as 'being identical with Socrates'. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000]) | |
A reaction: I think it is absurd to think that self-identity is an intrinsic 'property', possessed by everything. That a=a is a convenience for logicians, meaning nothing in the world. And it is relational. The sharing of properties is indeed what needs explanation. |
10416 | Can properties have parts? [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Can properties have parts? | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 6.4) | |
A reaction: If powers are more fundamental than properties, with the latter often being complexes of the underlying powers, then yes they do. But powers don't. Presumably whatever is fundamental shouldn't have parts. Why? |
10417 | There are only first-order properties ('red'), and none of higher-order ('coloured') [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: 'Elementarism' is the view that there are first-order properties, but that there are no properties of any higher-order. There are first-order properties like various shades of red, but there is no higher-order property, like 'being a colour'. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 7.1) | |
A reaction: [He cites Bergmann 1968] Interesting. Presumably the programme is naturalistic (and hence congenial to me), and generalisations about properties are conceptual, while the properties themselves are natural. |
10413 | The best-known candidate for an identity condition for properties is necessary coextensiveness [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: The best-known candidate for an identity condition for properties is necessary coextensiveness. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 6) | |
A reaction: The necessity (in all possible worlds) covers renates and cordates. It is hard to see how one could assert the necessity without some deeper explanation. What makes us deny that actually coextensive renates and cordates have different properties? |
10402 | Various attempts are made to evade universals being wholly present in different places [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: The worry that a single thing could be wholly present in widely separated locations has led to trope theory, to the claim that properties are not located in their instances, or to the view that this treats universals as if they were individuals. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 2.2) | |
A reaction: I find it dispiriting to come to philosophy in the late twentieth century and have to inherit such a ridiculous view as that there are things that are 'wholly present' in many places. |
10400 | Conceptualism says words like 'honesty' refer to concepts, not to properties [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Conceptualists urge that words like 'honesty', which might seem to refer to properties, really refer to concepts. A few contemporary philosophers have defended conceptualism, and recent empirical work bears on it, but the view is no longer common. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 1.1) | |
A reaction: ..and that's all Swoyer says about this very interesting view! He only cites Cocchiarella 1986 Ch.3. The view leaves a lot of work to be done in explaining how nature is, and how our concepts connect to it, and arise in response to it. |
10403 | If properties are abstract objects, then their being abstract exemplifies being abstract [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: If properties are abstract objects, then the property of being abstract should itself exemplify the property of being abstract. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 2.2) | |
A reaction: Swoyer links this observation with Plato's views on self-predication, and his Third Man Argument (which I bet originated with Aristotle in the Academy!). Do we have a regress of objects, as well as a regress of properties? |
10406 | One might hope to reduce possible worlds to properties [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: One might hope to reduce possible worlds to properties. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.1) | |
A reaction: [He cites Zalta 1983 4.2, and Forrest 1986] I think we are dealing with nothing more than imagined possibilities, which are inferred from our understanding of the underlying 'powers' of the actual world (expressed as 'properties'). |
10404 | Extreme empiricists can hardly explain anything [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Extreme empiricists wind up unable to explain much of anything. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 2.3) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the major problem for empiricism, but I am not sure why inference to the best explanation should not be part of a sensible empirical approach. Thinking laws are just 'descriptions of regularities' illustrates the difficulty. |
5163 | Basic propositions refer to a single experience, are incorrigible, and conclusively verifiable [Ayer] |
Full Idea: There is a class of empirical propositions, which I call 'basic propositions', which can be verified conclusively, since they refer solely to the contents of a single experience, which are incorrigible. | |
From: A.J. Ayer (Introduction to 'Language Truth and Logic' [1946], p.13) | |
A reaction: A classic statement of empirical foundationalism. I sort of agree that 'single experiences' are a 'given' for philosophy, but is questionable whether there is anything which could both be a single experience AND give rise to a proposition. |
5167 | The argument from analogy fails, so the best account of other minds is behaviouristic [Ayer] |
Full Idea: There are too many objections to the argument from analogy, so I am inclined to revert to a 'behaviouristic' interpretation of propositions about other people's experiences. | |
From: A.J. Ayer (Introduction to 'Language Truth and Logic' [1946], p.26) | |
A reaction: It seems odd to vote for behaviourism on one issue, if you aren't a general subscriber. It is one thing to say that behaviour is the best evidence for your explanation, quite another to equate the other mind with its behaviour. |
10408 | Intensions are functions which map possible worlds to sets of things denoted by an expression [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Intensions are functions that assign a set to the expression at each possible world, ..so the semantic value of 'red' is the function that maps each possible world to the set of things in that world that are red. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: I am suddenly deeply alienated from this mathematical logicians' way of talking about what 'red' means! We need more psychology, not less. We call things red if we imagine them as looking red. Is imagination a taboo in analytical philosophy? |
10409 | Research suggests that concepts rely on typical examples [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Recent empirical work on concepts says that many concepts have graded membership, and stress the importance of phenomena like typicality, prototypes, and exemplars. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: [He cites Rorsch 1978 as the start of this] I say the mind is a database, exactly corresponding to tables, fields etc. Prototypes sound good as the way we identify a given category. Universals are the 'typical' examples labelling areas (e.g. goat). |
5164 | A statement is meaningful if observation statements can be deduced from it [Ayer] |
Full Idea: In the improved version, a statement was verifiable, and consequently meaningful, if 'some observation-statement can be deduced from it in conjunction with certain other premises, without being deducible from those other premises alone'. | |
From: A.J. Ayer (Introduction to 'Language Truth and Logic' [1946], p.15) | |
A reaction: I.Berlin showed that any statement S could pass this test, because if you assert 'S' and 'If S then O', these two statements entail O, which could be some random observation. Hence a 1946 revised version had to be produced. |
5165 | Directly verifiable statements must entail at least one new observation statement [Ayer] |
Full Idea: A statement is directly verifiable if it is either itself an observation-statement,or is such that in conjunction with one or more observation-statements it entails at least one observation-statement which is not deducible from these other premises alone. | |
From: A.J. Ayer (Introduction to 'Language Truth and Logic' [1946], p.17) | |
A reaction: This is the 1946 revised version of the Verification Principle, which was then torpedoed by an elaborate counterexample from Alonzo Church. Ayer thereafter abandoned attempts to find a precise statement of it. |
5166 | The principle of verification is not an empirical hypothesis, but a definition [Ayer] |
Full Idea: I wish the principle of verification to be regarded, not as an empirical hypothesis, but as a definition. | |
From: A.J. Ayer (Introduction to 'Language Truth and Logic' [1946], p.21) | |
A reaction: This is Ayer's attempt to meet the well known objection of 'turning the tables' on his theory (by asking whether it is tautological or empirically verifiable). However, if it is just a definition, then presumably it is completely arbitrary… |
10401 | The F and G of logic cover a huge range of natural language combinations [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: All sorts of combinations of copulas ('is') with verbs, adverbs, adjectives, determiners, common nouns, noun phrases and prepositional phrases go over into the familiar Fs and Gs of standard logical notation. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 1.2) | |
A reaction: This is a nice warning of how misleading logic can be when trying to understand how we think about reality. Montague semantics is an attempt to tackle the problem. Numbers as adjectives are a clear symptom of the difficulties. |
5162 | Sentences only express propositions if they are meaningful; otherwise they are 'statements' [Ayer] |
Full Idea: I suggest that every grammatically significant indicative sentence expresses a 'statement', but the word 'proposition' will be reserved for what is expressed by sentences that are literally meaningful. | |
From: A.J. Ayer (Introduction to 'Language Truth and Logic' [1946], p.10) | |
A reaction: We don't have to accept Ayer's over-fussy requirements for what is meaningful to accept that this is a good distinction. Every day we hear statements from people (e.g. politicians) in which we can fish in vain for the underlying proposition. |
10420 | Maybe a proposition is just a property with all its places filled [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: Some say we can think of a proposition as a limiting case of a property, as when the two-place property '___ loves ___' can become the zero-placed property, or proposition 'that Sam loves Darla'. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 7.6) | |
A reaction: If you had a prior commitment to the idea that reality largely consists of bundles of properties, I suppose you might find this tempting. |
5168 | Moral approval and disapproval concerns classes of actions, rather than particular actions [Ayer] |
Full Idea: The common objects of moral approval and disapproval are not particular actions so much as classes of actions. | |
From: A.J. Ayer (Introduction to 'Language Truth and Logic' [1946], p.27) | |
A reaction: This 1946 revision of his pure emotivism looks like a move towards Hare's prescriptivism, where classes, rules and principles are seen as the window-dressing of emotivism. It's still a bad theory. |
1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
10412 | If laws are mere regularities, they give no grounds for future prediction [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: If laws were mere regularities, then the fact that observed Fs have been Gs would give us no reason to conclude that those Fs we haven't encountered will also be Gs. | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: I take this simple point to be very powerful. No amount of regularity gives grounds for asserting future patterns - one only has Humean habits. Causal mechanisms are what we are after. |
10411 | Two properties can have one power, and one property can have two powers [Swoyer] |
Full Idea: If properties are identical when they confer the same capacities on their instances, different properties seem able to bestow the same powers (e.g. force), and one property can bestow different powers (attraction or repulsion). | |
From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
A reaction: Interesting, but possibly a misunderstanding. Powers are basic, and properties are combinations of powers. A 'force' isn't a basic power, it is a consequence of various properties. Relational behaviours are also not basic powers, which are the source. |
5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |