22 ideas
| 6334 | The function of the truth predicate? Understanding 'true'? Meaning of 'true'? The concept of truth? A theory of truth? [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: We must distinguish the function of the truth predicate, what it is to understand 'true', the meaning of 'true', grasping the concept of truth, and a theory of truth itself. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.2.8) | |
| A reaction: It makes you feel tired to think about it. Presumably every other philosophical analysis has to do this many jobs. Clearly Horwich wants to propose one account which will do all five jobs. Personally I don't believe these five are really distinct. |
| 6342 | Some correspondence theories concern facts; others are built up through reference and satisfaction [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: One correspondence theory (e.g. early Wittgenstein) concerns representations and facts; alternatively (Tarski, Davidson) the category of fact is eschewed, and the truth of sentences or propositions is built out of relations of reference and satisfaction. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.7.35) | |
| A reaction: A helpful distinction. Clearly the notion of a 'fact' is an elusive one ("how many facts are there in this room?"), so it seems quite promising to say that the parts of the sentence correspond, rather than the whole thing. |
| 6332 | The common-sense theory of correspondence has never been worked out satisfactorily [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: The common-sense notion that truth is a kind of 'correspondence with the facts' has never been worked out to anyone's satisfaction. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I've put this in to criticise it. Philosophy can't work by rejecting theories which can't be 'worked out', and accepting theories (like Tarski's) because they can be 'worked out'. All our theories will end up minimal, and defiant of common sense. |
| 6335 | The redundancy theory cannot explain inferences from 'what x said is true' and 'x said p', to p [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: The redundancy theory is unable to account for the inference from "Oscar's claim is true" and "Oscar's claim is that snow is white" to "the proposition 'that snow is white' is true", and hence to "snow is white". | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.2.9) | |
| A reaction: Earlier objections appealed to the fact that the word 'true' seemed to have a use in ordinary speech, but this seems a much stronger one. In general, showing the role of a term in making inferences pins it down better than ordinary speech does. |
| 6344 | Truth is a useful concept for unarticulated propositions and generalisations about them [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: All uses of the truth predicate are explained by the hypothesis that its entire raison d'être is to help us say things about unarticulated propositions, and in particular to express generalisations about them. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Concl) | |
| A reaction: This certain is a very deflationary notion of truth. Articulated propositions are considered to stand on their own two feet, without need of 'is true'. He makes truth sound like a language game, though. Personally I prefer to mention reality. |
| 6336 | No deflationary conception of truth does justice to the fact that we aim for truth [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: It has been suggested that no deflationary conception of truth could do justice to the fact that we aim for the truth. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.2.11) | |
| A reaction: (He mentions Dummett and Wright). People don't only aim for it - they become very idealistic about it, and sometimes die for it. Personally I think that any study of truth should use as its example police investigations, not philosophical analysis. |
| 23299 | Horwich's deflationary view is novel, because it relies on propositions rather than sentences [Horwich, by Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Horwich's brave and striking move is to make the primary bearers of truth propositions - not exactly a new idea in itself, but new in the context of a serious attempt to defend deflationism. | |
| From: report of Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990]) by Donald Davidson - The Folly of Trying to Define Truth p.30 | |
| A reaction: Davidson rejects propositions because they can't be individuated, but I totally accept propositions. I'm puzzled why this would produce a deflationist theory, since I think it points to a much more robust view. |
| 6337 | The deflationary picture says believing a theory true is a trivial step after believing the theory [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: According to the deflationary picture, believing that a theory is true is a trivial step beyond believing the theory. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.2.17) | |
| A reaction: What has gone wrong with this picture is that you cannot (it seems to me) give a decent account of belief without mentioning truth. To believe a proposition is to hold it true. Hume's emotional account (Idea 2208) makes belief bewildering. |
| 6339 | Logical form is the aspects of meaning that determine logical entailments [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: The logical forms of the sentences in a language are those aspects of their meanings that determine the relations of deductive entailment holding amongst them. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.6.30) | |
| A reaction: A helpful definition. Not all sentences, therefore, need to have a 'logical form'. Is the logical form the same as the underlying proposition. The two must converge, given that propositions lack the ambiguity that is often found in sentences. |
| 6338 | We could know the truth-conditions of a foreign sentence without knowing its meaning [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: Someone who does not understand German and is told 'Schnee ist weiss' is true if frozen H2O is white, does not understand the German sentence, even though he knows the truth-conditions. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.5.22 n1) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a powerful objection to Davidson's well-known claim that meaning is truth-conditions. Horwich likes the idea that meaning is use, but I think a similar objection arises - you can use a sentence well without knowing its meaning. |
| 6340 | There are Fregean de dicto propositions, and Russellian de re propositions, or a mixture [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: There are pure, Fregean, abstract, de dicto propositions, in which a compositional structure is filled only with senses; there are pure, Russellian, concrete, de re propositions, which are filled with referents; and there are mixed propositions. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.6.31) | |
| A reaction: Once Frege has distinguished sense from reference, this distinction of propositions is likely to follow. The current debate over the internalist and externalist accounts of concepts seems to continue the debate. A mixed strategy sounds good. |
| 6341 | Right translation is a mapping of languages which preserves basic patterns of usage [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: The right translation between words of two languages is the mapping that preserves basic patterns of usage - where usage is characterised non-semantically, in terms of circumstances of application, assertibility conditions and inferential role. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Truth (2nd edn) [1990], Ch.6.32) | |
| A reaction: It still strikes me that if you ask why a piece of language is used in a certain way, you find yourself facing something deeper about meaning than mere usage. Horwich cites Wittgenstein and Quine in his support. Could a machine pass his test? |
| 7404 | Nations are not obliged to help one-another, but are obliged not to harm one another [Grotius, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: Grotius explored the implications of the idea that nation-states were under no obligation to help one another, but they were obliged not to harm each other. | |
| From: report of Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: This is quite a striking disanalogy between accepted personal morality and political morality. There are signs in recent years of some recognition that other nations should not just sit and watch suffering. |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |
| 7402 | Everyone has a right of self-preservation, and harming others is usually unjustifiable [Grotius, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: Grotius said that all men would agree that everyone has a fundamental right to preserve themselves, and that wanton or unnecessary injury to another person is unjustifiable. | |
| From: report of Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Who cares if it is 'justifiable'? Do I have to 'justify' killing a mosquito if it lands on my arm? Grotius is taking a step beyond saying that people should defend themselves, to say that they have a 'right' to - the only truly basic right. |
| 21938 | Democracy needs respect for individuality, but the 'community of friends' implies strict equality [Grotius] |
| Full Idea: There is no democracy without respect for irreducible singularity, but there is no democracy with the 'community of friends' without the calculation of majorities, without identifiable representable subjects, all equal. | |
| From: Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625]), quoted by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 7 | |
| A reaction: [source not given] Derrida calls this conflict 'tragic'. The obvious reply is that equality is not an absolute. We can be equal in voting rights while being unequal in height or musical talent. |
| 19845 | A person is free to renounce their state, as long as it is not a moment of crisis [Grotius, by Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Grotius thinks that each person can renounce his state and leave the country. (n15: provided it is not to evade one's duty the moment the homeland needs us; this would be criminal and punishable; it would not be withdrawal, but desertion) | |
| From: report of Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625]) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The Social Contract (tr Cress) III.18 | |
| A reaction: The obvious example is Britons going to America in 1939, or (more controversially) conscripts going to Canada to avoid fighting in Vietnam. I'm unclear whether the idea in the note is that of Grotius or of Rousseau). Is tax exile OK, then? |
| 22133 | Grotius and Pufendorf based natural law on real (rather than idealised) humanity [Grotius, by Ford,JD] |
| Full Idea: Grotius and Pufendorf transformed the natural law tradition by starting from identifiable traits of human nature rather than ideas about what human beings ought to be. | |
| From: report of Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625]) by J.D. Ford - Pufendorf, Samuel p.863 |
| 7406 | A natural right of self-preservation is balanced by a natural law to avoid unnecessary harm [Grotius, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: For Grotius, there was a fundamental 'natural right' of self-preservation upon which all known moralities and codes of social behaviour must have been constructed, but it is balanced by a fundament duty or 'natural law' to abstain from harming others. | |
| From: report of Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This theory has the virtue of economy, but I don't see how you can clearly justify those particular natural rights and laws, without allowing others to creep in, such as a right to a decent share of food, or a law requiring some fairness. |
| 7403 | Grotius ignored elaborate natural law theories, preferring a basic right of self-preservation [Grotius, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: Grotius said there was a minimum core of morality (based on self-preservation), and disregarded the elaborate accounts of principles of natural law which Aristotelians had always sought to develop. | |
| From: report of Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Aquinas would be the key Aristotelian here. I tend towards the Aristotelian view. If you go for the minimal view, it is not clear why there is a 'right' to self-preservation, rather than a mere desire for it. |
| 23585 | It is permissible in a just cause to capture a place in neutral territory [Grotius] |
| Full Idea: It is permissible for one who is waging a just war to take possession of a place situated in a country free from hostilities. | |
| From: Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625], II.ii.x), quoted by Michael Walzer - Just and Unjust Wars 15 n | |
| A reaction: This rejects Combatant Equality, allowing the just to do what is morally forbidden to the unjust. |
| 6892 | Moral principles have some validity without a God commanding obedience [Grotius, by Mautner] |
| Full Idea: In the Prolegomena to his work there is a famous statement that moral principles laid down in the work would have some degree of validity even if there was no God commanding obedience. | |
| From: report of Hugo Grotius (On the Law of War and Peace [1625]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.229 | |
| A reaction: I am not clear why Grotius felt obliged to qualify his claim with the phrase 'some degree'. I don't see how God's command can affect the 'validity' of morality, or how there can be a middle ground between dependence on and independence of God. |