Lexicon of Arguments

 

I 38
Microstructure/macrostructure: Putnam: we cannot understand from the knowledge of elementary particles why square pegs do not fit into round holes. But that’s not a disturbing ontological gap!
Cf. >Microstructure/Armstrong, >Causal explanation, >Disposition.
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II (f) 126
Def understanding/Rorty: ability to link old descriptions with new descriptions.
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IV 109 ff
Comprehensibility: it is hard to explain what it is supposed to mean that tables and chairs are incomprehensible and God is not (or vice versa!). Logical positivism is already something of a solution with its formal type of speech.
>Positivism, >Formal speech.
IV 117
Comprehensibility: problem from Parmenides to Ayer: we are constantly tempted to say "the intelligibility conditions of a statement are..." Although the statement itself does not fulfil the specified conditions.
>Parmenides, >Ayer.
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VI 208 ff
McDowell: Problem: "whether our experience is excluded from in the area of the kind of intelligibility appropriate to the concept of meaning".
RortyVsMcDowell: one should not even speak of "forms of intelligibility"! -
McDowell: logical space of reasons - and logical space of the laws are each sui generis.
>Space of reason, >space of nature.
VI 211
RortyVsMcDowell: there are no strictly separated areas (of reason and law). All language games are sui generis.
>Language game.
VI 212
Understanding/explanation/RortyVsMcDowell/Rorty: we should not talk about comprehensibility. >Explanations.
Comprehensibility/Rorty: is quite cheap to have: if we train two people to speak the same way.