15 ideas
| 23291 | Without truth, both language and thought are impossible [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Without a grasp of the concept of truth, not only language, but thought itself, is impossible. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.16) | |
| A reaction: Davidson never mentions animals, but I like this idea because it points to importance of truth for animals as well. I say that truth is relevant to any mind that makes judgements - and quite small animals (e.g. ants and spiders) make judgements. |
| 23284 | Plato's Forms confused truth with the most eminent truths, so only Truth itself is completely true [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Plato's conflation of abstract universals with entities of supreme value reinforced the confusion of truth with the most eminent truths. …The only perfect exemplar of a Form is the Form itself, …and only truth itself is completely true. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.3) | |
| A reaction: Even non-subscribers to Plato often talk as if there were some grand thing called the Truth with a capital T, quite often used in a religious context. Truth is the hallmark of successful (non-fanciful) thought. |
| 23286 | Truth can't be a goal, because we can neither recognise it nor confim it [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Since it is neither visible as a target, nor recognisable when achieved, there is no point in calling truth a goal. We should only aim at increasing confidence in our beliefs, by collecting further evidence or checking our calculations. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], P.6) | |
| A reaction: This is mainly aimed at pragmatists, but Davidson obviously subscribes (as do I) to their fallibilist view of knowledge. |
| 23292 | Correspondence can't be defined, but it shows how truth depends on the world [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Correspondence, while it is empty as a definition, does capture the thought that truth depends on how the world is. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.16) | |
| A reaction: Just don't try to give a precise account of the correspondence between two things (thoughts and facts) which are so utterly different in character. |
| 23288 | When Tarski defines truth for different languages, how do we know it is a single concept? [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: We have to wonder how we know that it is some single concept which Tarski indicates how to define for each of a number of well-behaved languages. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], P.11) | |
| A reaction: Davidson says that Tarski makes the assumption that it is a single concept, but fails to demonstrate the fact. This resembles Frege's Julius Caesar problem - of how you know whether your number definition has defined a number. |
| 23287 | Disquotation only accounts for truth if the metalanguage contains the object language [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Disquotation cannot pretend to give a complete account of the concept of truth, since it works only in the special case where the metalanguage contains the object language. Neither can contain their own truth predicate. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.10) | |
| A reaction: Presumably more sophisticated and complete accounts would need a further account of translation between languages - which explains Quine's interest in that topic. […see this essay, p.12] |
| 23285 | If we try to identify facts precisely, they all melt into one (as the Slingshot Argument proves) [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: If we try to provide a serious semantics for reference to facts, we discover that they melt into one; there is no telling them apart. The relevant argument (the 'Slingshot') was credited to Frege by Alonso Church. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.5) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like good grounds for not attempting to be too precise. 'There are bluebells in my local wood' identifies a fact by words, but even an animal can distinguish this fact. Only a logician dreams of making its content precise. |
| 23289 | Knowing the potential truth conditions of a sentence is necessary and sufficient for understanding [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: It is clear that someone who knows under what conditions a sentence would be true understands that sentence, …and if someone does not know under what conditions it would be true then they do not understand it. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.13) | |
| A reaction: I've always subscribed to this view. Langauge is meaningless if you can't relate it to reality, and I don't think there could be a language without an intuitive notion of truth. |
| 23290 | It could be that the use of a sentence is explained by its truth conditions [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: It may be that sentences are used as they are because of their truth conditions, and they have the truth conditions they do because of how they are used. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.13) | |
| A reaction: I've always taken the attempt to explain meaning by use as absurd. It is similar to trying to explain mind in terms of function. In each case, what is the intrinsic nature of the thing, which makes that use or that function possible? |
| 12163 | Literary meaning emerges in comparisons, and tradition shows which comparisons are relevant [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: We must discover the meanings that emerge when works of literature are experience in relation to each other. ...The importance of tradition is that it denotes - ideally, at least - the class of relevant comparisons. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.27) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice attempt to explain why we all agree that a thorough education in an art is an essential prerequisite for good taste. Some people (e.g. among the young) seem to have natural good taste. How does that happen? |
| 12162 | In literature, word replacement changes literary meaning [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: In literary contexts semantically equivalent words cannot replace each other without loss of literary meaning. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.25) | |
| A reaction: The notion of 'literary meaning' is not a standard one, and is questionable whether 'meaning' is the right word, given that a shift in word in a poem is as much to do with sound as with connotations. |
| 12159 | Without intentions we can't perceive sculpture, but that is not the whole story [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: A person for whom it made no difference whether a sculpture was carved by wind and rain or by human hand would be unable to interpret or perceive sculptures - even though the interpretation of sculpture is not the reading of an intention. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.15) | |
| A reaction: Scruton compares it to the role of intention in language, where there is objective meaning, even though intention is basic to speech. |
| 12160 | In aesthetic interest, even what is true is treated as though it were not [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: In aesthetic interest, even what is true is treated as though it were not. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.18) | |
| A reaction: A nice aphorism. I always feel uncomfortable reading novels about real people, although the historical Macbeth doesn't bother me much. Novels are too close to reality. Macbeth didn't speak blank verse. |
| 12161 | We can be objective about conventions, but love of art is needed to understand its traditions [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: An historian can elucidate convention while having no feeling for the art that exploits it; whereas an understanding of tradition is reserved for those with the critical insight which comes from the love of art, both past and present. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.24) | |
| A reaction: This aesthetic observation is obviously close to Scruton's well-known conservatism in politics. I am doubtful whether the notion of 'tradition' can stand up to close examination, though we all know roughly what he means. |
| 468 | Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.] |
| Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice. | |
| From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where? |