10 ideas
| 9169 | A statement can be metaphysically necessary and epistemologically contingent [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: A statement can be (metaphysically) necessary and epistemologically contingent. Human intuition has no privileged access to metaphysical necessity. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and Reference [1973], p.160) | |
| A reaction: The terminology here is dangerously confusing. 'Contingent' is a term which (as Kripke insists) refers to reality, not to our epistemological abilities. The locution of adding the phrase "for all I know" seems to handle the problem better. |
| 5819 | Conceivability is no proof of possibility [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Conceivability is no proof of possibility. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and Reference [1973], p.159) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a really basic truth which all novice philosophers should digest. It led many philosophers, especially rationalists, into all sorts of ill-founded claims about what is possible or necessary. Zombies, for instance… |
| 9168 | I can't distinguish elm trees, but I mean by 'elm' the same set of trees as everybody else [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: My concept of an elm tree is exactly the same as my concept of a beech tree (I blush to confess). ..We still say that the extension of 'elm' in my idiolect is the same as the extension of 'elm' in anyone else's, viz. the set of all elm trees. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and Reference [1973], p.154) | |
| A reaction: This example is clearer and less open to hair-splitting than his water/XYZ example. You could, with Putnam, say that his meaning of 'elm' is outside his head, but you could also say that he doesn't understand the word very well. |
| 5820 | 'Water' has an unnoticed indexical component, referring to stuff around here [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Our theory can be summarized as saying that words like 'water' have an unnoticed indexical component: "water" is stuff that bears a certain similarity relation to the water around here. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and Reference [1973], p.160) | |
| A reaction: This is the causal theory of reference, which leads to externalism about concepts, which leads to an externalist view of thought, which undermines internal accounts of the mind like functionalism, and leaves little room for scepticism… Etc. |
| 9170 | We need to recognise the contribution of society and of the world in determining reference [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Traditional semantic theory leaves out two contributions to the determination of reference - the contribution of society and the contribution of the real world; a better semantic theory must encompass both. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and Reference [1973], p.161) | |
| A reaction: I strongly agree that there is a social aspect to reference-fixing, but I am much more dubious about the world 'determining' anything. The whole of his Twin Earth point could be mopped up by a social account, with 'experts' as the key idea. |
| 5817 | Language is more like a cooperative steamship than an individual hammer [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: There are tools like a hammer used by one person, and there are tools like a steamship which require cooperative activity; words have been thought of too much on the model of the first sort of tool. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and Reference [1973], p.156) | |
| A reaction: This clear thought strikes me as the most fruitful and sensible consequence of Wittgenstein's later ideas (as opposed to the relativistic 'language game' ideas). I am unconvinced that a private language is logically impossible, but it would be feeble. |
| 13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
| Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
| From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
| A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
| 5818 | If water is H2O in the actual world, there is no possible world where it isn't H2O [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Once we have discovered that water (in the actual world) is H2O, nothing counts as a possible world in which water isn't H2O. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Meaning and Reference [1973], p.159) | |
| A reaction: Presumably there could be a possible world in which water is a bit cloudy, so the fact that it is H2O is being judged as essential. Presumably the scientists in the possible world might discover that we are wrong about the chemistry of water? |
| 20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
| From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
| A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |
| 16689 | The schools said spirits lack extension, and wonder how many could dance on a needle's point [More,H] |
| Full Idea: Many, not without reason, laugh at those ridiculous fancies of the schools, that rashly take away all extensions from spirits, whether souls or angels, and then dispute how many of them booted and spurred may dance on a needle's point at once. | |
| From: Henry More (Immortality of the Soul [1659], III.2.1), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 17.3 | |
| A reaction: This famous idea originated with William Chillingworth. More's version is the classic one. Pasnau cites Aquinas Summa 1a 52.3 as discussing the actual question (and says this couldn't happen). |