Find counter arguments by entering NameVs… or …VsName.
| Disputed term/author/ism | Author Vs Author |
Entry |
Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aristotle | Rorty Vs Aristotle | IV 117 Comprehensibility/Rorty: It is difficult to explain what it means to say that tables and chairs are incomprehensible, but God is not (or vice versa!). The logical positivism with its formal speech is in saome way a solution. Comprehensibility/Rorty: Problem from Parmenides to Ayer: we are constantly trying to define "conditions of intelligibility of a statement ..." although this statement itself does not meet the conditions specified. Comprehensibility/Aristotle/RortyVsAristotle: does not solve the problem at all, if he demands that the intellect become identical with the object, that renders the term "matter" incomprehensible. Comprehensibility/Noumenon/thing in itself/Kant/RortyVsKant/Rorty: in Kant, the concept of noumenon becomes incomprehensible, when he says an expression is meaningful if it stands for a mental content which forms a synthesis of sensual perceptions through a concept. ((s) through the synthesis of the sensible to the mental). |
Rorty I Richard Rorty Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton/NJ 1979 German Edition: Der Spiegel der Natur Frankfurt 1997 Rorty II Richard Rorty Philosophie & die Zukunft Frankfurt 2000 Rorty II (b) Richard Rorty "Habermas, Derrida and the Functions of Philosophy", in: R. Rorty, Truth and Progress. Philosophical Papers III, Cambridge/MA 1998 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (c) Richard Rorty Analytic and Conversational Philosophy Conference fee "Philosophy and the other hgumanities", Stanford Humanities Center 1998 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (d) Richard Rorty Justice as a Larger Loyalty, in: Ronald Bontekoe/Marietta Stepanians (eds.) Justice and Democracy. Cross-cultural Perspectives, University of Hawaii 1997 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (e) Richard Rorty Spinoza, Pragmatismus und die Liebe zur Weisheit, Revised Spinoza Lecture April 1997, University of Amsterdam In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (f) Richard Rorty "Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache", keynote lecture for Gadamer’ s 100th birthday, University of Heidelberg In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (g) Richard Rorty "Wild Orchids and Trotzky", in: Wild Orchids and Trotzky: Messages form American Universities ed. Mark Edmundson, New York 1993 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty III Richard Rorty Contingency, Irony, and solidarity, Chambridge/MA 1989 German Edition: Kontingenz, Ironie und Solidarität Frankfurt 1992 Rorty IV (a) Richard Rorty "is Philosophy a Natural Kind?", in: R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Vol. I, Cambridge/Ma 1991, pp. 46-62 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (b) Richard Rorty "Non-Reductive Physicalism" in: R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Vol. I, Cambridge/Ma 1991, pp. 113-125 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (c) Richard Rorty "Heidegger, Kundera and Dickens" in: R. Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers Vol. 2, Cambridge/MA 1991, pp. 66-82 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (d) Richard Rorty "Deconstruction and Circumvention" in: R. Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers Vol. 2, Cambridge/MA 1991, pp. 85-106 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty V (a) R. Rorty "Solidarity of Objectivity", Howison Lecture, University of California, Berkeley, January 1983 In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1998 Rorty V (b) Richard Rorty "Freud and Moral Reflection", Edith Weigert Lecture, Forum on Psychiatry and the Humanities, Washington School of Psychiatry, Oct. 19th 1984 In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1988 Rorty V (c) Richard Rorty The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy, in: John P. Reeder & Gene Outka (eds.), Prospects for a Common Morality. Princeton University Press. pp. 254-278 (1992) In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1988 Rorty VI Richard Rorty Truth and Progress, Cambridge/MA 1998 German Edition: Wahrheit und Fortschritt Frankfurt 2000 |
| Armstrong, D. | Sellars Vs Armstrong, D. | I XXXVIII Def Perception/Armstrong. "Nothing more than the acquisition of knowledge of individual facts about the world by means of the senses" (1961). It is here not about a descriptive content just like with Dennett. I XXXIX Perception/thinking/SellarsVsArmstrong/SellarsVsDennett/Sellars: it is not the same, whether you merely think something or if you see something and at the same time think! Even if one accepts that the thoughts that come into play in the perception possess a particular content (Sellars pro) so it is hardly understandable how the addition of another conceptual article can compensate for the difference between seeing and mere thinking. |
Sellars I Wilfrid Sellars The Myth of the Given: Three Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind, University of London 1956 in: H. Feigl/M. Scriven (eds.) Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 1956 German Edition: Der Empirismus und die Philosophie des Geistes Paderborn 1999 Sellars II Wilfred Sellars Science, Perception, and Reality, London 1963 In Wahrheitstheorien, Gunnar Skirbekk Frankfurt/M. 1977 |
| Behaviorism | Loar Vs Behaviorism | content/Belief/Loar: is not delivered through a connection with linguistic behavior. If namely 1. the language behavior is described purely syntactically, the connection is not interlinguistic and not interpersonal either. 2. if it is described semantically, e.g. "utterance which means p": then something outside or inside the theory must distinguish between "means p" and "means q". a) if within, our problem persists b) if outside: the theory does not fully represent the content, because then the source is elsewhere. I 9 Belief Relation/Relation Theory/Loar: so it seems that the only relevant relation between a belief and a sentence in the idiolect of the person is explained by a practical syllogism. Practical Syllogism/Belief/Loar: x' utterance should be explained by x' desire to communicate p and x' belief that his utterance will bring about the result. I.e. our common sense theory uses general behavior. content/Loar: but this is not enough, we also have to include perception. Propositional Attitude/Attribution/Theory/Loar: we need: a) Generalizations about input in relation to perceptual circumstances, b) Restrictions on the rationality of beliefs, c) Output generalizations for beliefs and intentions. |
Loar I B. Loar Mind and Meaning Cambridge 1981 Loar II Brian Loar "Two Theories of Meaning" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell Oxford 1976 |
| Berkeley, G. | Peacocke Vs Berkeley, G. | I 51 Meaning Space/Sensory Space/Perception Space/Peacocke: is undeniable, and it is neither just artificial nor derivative. It is obviously not populated by experience itself. Rather, there is a correlated space for each intrinsically spatial sense which is characterized by it. I 52 E.g. if we are touched at the neck, it is something else than if we see something in front of us. E.g. but it is the same sense of "closer" when we hear or see someone approaching. (Representational) and it refers to the same space. ((s) This is about a sense of the word, not perceptual sense). PeacockeVsBerkeley: wrongly inferred from the (correct) premise that vision and touch have no common ideas (ideas, notions) to the wrong conclusion: that a sense of dimension should have priority with respect to the philosophical explanation here. Asterisked Predicates/"Elliptical*"/"Red*"/Field of Vision/Asterisk/Peacocke: asterisked predicates are truly spatial in a way! They relate to size and shape in the visual field. There is no ambiguity here, because different spaces are affected. "Elliptical" makes sense for us in different arbitrary spaces. (Not only physical). If it was just about a single space, there would be problems: see above: Problems with the translation theory or additional representational content to explain "elliptical" only by public, physical space. Sensory Data/Peacocke: the sense data theory has characteristic spatial concepts such as square or elongated sensory data, etc. The insight consists in that these spatial predicates I 53 cannot be defined at the level of representational content. The space in which these additional spatial predicates are located, is the sensation space (non-representational). This distinction prevents us from committing the error of asking: "Are sensory data surfaces of physical objects?" "Can we perceive sensory data ?". |
Peacocke I Chr. R. Peacocke Sense and Content Oxford 1983 Peacocke II Christopher Peacocke "Truth Definitions and Actual Languges" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell Oxford 1976 |
| Berkeley, G. | Stegmüller Vs Berkeley, G. | Stegmüller IV 376 Perception/Berkeley: the elements of ideas (the real things) depend on the will of the perceiver! They run in accordance with certain rules (which we would call natural laws today). Deceptions do not work this way. This proves that the divine spirit is more powerful than ours. Reality/Berkeley: those ideas that make up what we call reality don't need to be constantly brought out again. If we do not perceive them, they remain existent because God's Spirit constantly perceives them. VsBerkeley: unclear: if an idea exists only in and through being perceived, then it seems to be an object of consciousness. But then it is impossible that more than one mind could perceive exactly the same idea! VsVs: For example, the tree I see, which is only my own idea, ceases to exist when I cease to see it. IV 377 Although the ideas are causally dependent on the perceiving minds, they are not constituted by being perceived! Ideas: would then be more than mental contents or objects of reference: the real things would be ideas directly produced by God. The tree would then be independent of me. Terminology: "Immaterial realism". Realism because for the perceiver there is a whole world of other spirits and ideas. Theism/Stegmüller: Even ordinary theism claims that the physical world is "dependent on God", but this relationship remains dark here. In contrast, Berkeley's system is a clear and understandable interpretation: the world simply consists of ideas that exist in the divine spirit. IV 382 Materialism/Idealism/Berkeley/Stegmüller: the decision for an alternative depends on the statement on Berkeley's seven arguments (IV 379 380). VsBerkeley: on (i): what kind of similarity does the materialist demand? on (ii): Locke only assumes that there are acceptable explanations for seeing, hearing, touching, etc., in which only objects with spatial properties are used as a starting point, but whose other properties need have no similarities with our ideas of secondary qualities. The question of whether this is similar for primary qualities can be left open. IV 383 on (iii): even if movement, size, etc. are relative, they can be of an objective nature! Relativity does not imply mental dependence! on (v): it could be that a theory about a mind-independent reality is confirmed by the fact that it provides a better explanation for our sensory data than any other theory. Moreover, this argument is worthless for Berkeley: it is not specifically directed against materialism as opposed to its immaterial realism. The basic problem of any theory of representation: the "veil of perception" also exists here! on (vi): this is indeed a problem for materialism, but that such a difficulty as the body soul problem occurs does not prove the untenability of all variants of this theory. on (vii): things or qualities that are similar to our ideas do not need to be passive as well! Conclusion: StegmüllerVsBerkeley: no argument from BerkeleyVsMaterialism is conclusive! |
Carnap V W. Stegmüller Rudolf Carnap und der Wiener Kreis In Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie Bd I, München 1987 St I W. Stegmüller Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie Bd I Stuttgart 1989 St II W. Stegmüller Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie Bd 2 Stuttgart 1987 St III W. Stegmüller Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie Bd 3 Stuttgart 1987 St IV W. Stegmüller Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie Bd 4 Stuttgart 1989 |
| Burge, T. | Davidson Vs Burge, T. | I (d) 74 Burge: Two types externalism: a) Social: Meaning depends on social practices (community - b) on the causal history of the person. DavidsonVsBurge: a) our intuition does not suggest that the meaning of a speaker is determined by other speakers. b) Which group should be outstanding? c) an unconscious elite in the background is problematic. Cf. >externalism, >internalism. Burge: in order to have a thought about water, you just have to be in contact with water, you don’t have to prove anything. DavidsonVsBurge: even a false thought about water is one about water. - VsBurge: Community not causally involved Burge: radiation patterns or physically described stimuli make everything infinitely complicated. DavidsonVs: Complicated for whom? It is us humans who make all these classifications and groupings! We group according to similarities that are obvious to ourselves. I (e) 116 DavidsonVsPutnam, DavidsonVsBurge: The fact that he focuses so strongly on the everyday situation through the triangulation sets him apart from the externalism of Putnam and Burge. Glüer II 53 DavidsonVsSocial character of meaning: even idiolect interpretable in principle (via causal hypotheses). Glüer II 167 Burge and Dummett think that what speakers mean by their words depended very much on how the community used those words. DavidsonVsDummett, DavidsonVsBurge: Complete nonsense, because it has nothing to do with successful communication! If you speak differently than the community, and someone finds out, then you can communicate all day long. And that happens all the time. Frank I 665 Contents/Thoughts/Externalism/Burge/Davidson: Content is not determined by what is happening in the person, or by what is easily accessible for them through careful reflection. (E.g. incorrectly used terms, information gaps). DavidsonVsBurge: I’m not sure how these assertions are to be understood, because I’m not sure how serious talk of a "direct acquaintance" with a content is to be taken. But the first person authority is seriously compromised by that. Therefore, I must reject one of the premises of Burge. 1) I agree that content is not only determined or "fixed" by what is going on inside me. 2) VsBurge: Vs representation of the way in which social and other external factors control the contents. Fra I 665/666 DavidsonVsBurge: His characteristics are not as relevant as he makes them look: E.g. Suppose I believe that "arthritis" is only used for calcium-induced arthritis. My friend Arthur knows better. We both say honestly to Smith: "Carl has arthritis’. Burge: Then our words mean the same thing, we mean the same and express the same belief. My mistake is irrelevant for what I thought on this occasion. Reason: that’s what everyone (who is not tainted by philosophy) would say about Arthur and me. DavidsonVsBurge: I doubt that he is right, but even if he were right, it would not prove his point: Ordinary attributions of meanings and attitudes are based on far-reaching and vague assumptions about what speaker and listener have in common. If some assumptions are not confirmed, we can change the words we used often change drastically. We usually choose the easy way: we take a speaker by his word, even if that does not fully account for one aspect of his thought. E.g. if Smith informs a third party about what Arthur and I both believe about arthritis, then he may mislead its listeners! Fra I 667 If he is careful, he would add, "But Davidson thinks arthritis is calcium-induced". The fact that this addition is necessary shows that the simple attribution was not right. BurgeVs: could reply that the report is literally correct ((s) because also the wrong-believer sincerely believes that it is arthritis). DavidsonVsBurge: That overlooks the extent to which the contents of a belief depend on of the contents of other beliefs. Therefore, there can be no simple rigid rule for the attribution of a single thought. Burge: social determination of contents also leads to the fact that we usually mean what others mean in the community. "certain responsibility towards the group practice". DavidsonVsBurge: I do not deny it, but that does not show what is supposed to show: a) It is often reasonable to make people responsible for ensuring that they know the meaning of their words. But this has nothing to do with what they want to say! b) As a good citizens, we want to increase the opportunities for communication, but that only explains our "legalistic" attribution of meanings and beliefs. ((s) that the meanings are not so). c) A speaker who wants to be understood, must have the intention that his words are interpreted in a certain way, and consequently the way others do. And vice versa, the listener wants to interpret the words as the speaker does. This has moral weight, but it has no necessary connection with the determination of what anyone thinks. I 667/668 Externalism/Social community/Meaning/Meaning/DavidsonVsBurge: We are not forced to give the words of a person the meanings that they have in their language community. It is also not true that we cannot help but to interpret their propositional attitudes on the same basis. Donald Davidson (1987) : Knowing One's Own Mind, in: Proceedings and Adresses of the American Philosophical Association LX (1987),441 -4 58 Frank I 710 Self-knowledge/Burge: Error excluded (immune), because reflection in the same act. DavidsonVsBurge: that only shows that you cannot make a mistake in identifying the contents. It does not show why you cannot be wrong about the existence of the attitude. Worse: Burge cannot show that the two kinds of knowledge (1st and 2nd order) have the same subject. As long as the asymmetry is not explained by recourse to the social situation (relationships between the speakers), I doubt that a non-skeptical solution is possible. I 711 Representation/Perceptual knowledge/Burge: It cannot generally be wrong that the representations represent that from which they usually originate and to which they are applied. DavidsonVsBurge: I have long been of this view, but I do not understand why Burge is of this view. How do we decide where representations usually originate? Circular: "from what they represent." But which of the many possible causes is the right one? Incidents in the nervous system, stimulation patterns of nerve endings, or a little further out? (proximal/distal). Burge: We should be watch out for the relation of different observers: they have similar perceptions. perception is "impersonal". DavidsonVsBurge: But that is exactly what should be proved! We need not only causal interaction between different observers and the same objects, but the right kind of causal interaction. |
Davidson I D. Davidson Der Mythos des Subjektiven Stuttgart 1993 Davidson I (a) Donald Davidson "Tho Conditions of Thoughts", in: Le Cahier du Collège de Philosophie, Paris 1989, pp. 163-171 In Der Mythos des Subjektiven, Stuttgart 1993 Davidson I (b) Donald Davidson "What is Present to the Mind?" in: J. Brandl/W. Gombocz (eds) The MInd of Donald Davidson, Amsterdam 1989, pp. 3-18 In Der Mythos des Subjektiven, Stuttgart 1993 Davidson I (c) Donald Davidson "Meaning, Truth and Evidence", in: R. Barrett/R. Gibson (eds.) Perspectives on Quine, Cambridge/MA 1990, pp. 68-79 In Der Mythos des Subjektiven, Stuttgart 1993 Davidson I (d) Donald Davidson "Epistemology Externalized", Ms 1989 In Der Mythos des Subjektiven, Stuttgart 1993 Davidson I (e) Donald Davidson "The Myth of the Subjective", in: M. Benedikt/R. Burger (eds.) Bewußtsein, Sprache und die Kunst, Wien 1988, pp. 45-54 In Der Mythos des Subjektiven, Stuttgart 1993 Davidson II Donald Davidson "Reply to Foster" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell Oxford 1976 Davidson III D. Davidson Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford 1980 German Edition: Handlung und Ereignis Frankfurt 1990 Davidson IV D. Davidson Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford 1984 German Edition: Wahrheit und Interpretation Frankfurt 1990 Davidson V Donald Davidson "Rational Animals", in: D. Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford 2001, pp. 95-105 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 D II K. Glüer D. Davidson Zur Einführung Hamburg 1993 Fra I M. Frank (Hrsg.) Analytische Theorien des Selbstbewusstseins Frankfurt 1994 |
| Davidson, D. | Quine Vs Davidson, D. | Davidson I 42 QuineVsDavidson: answered in "Der Kerngedanke des dritten Dogmas" (Th. and things): Davidson's account of his dualism of scheme and content involved a separation of conceptual schemes and language, but he did not think of separation but the concept of uninterpreted content is necessary to make conceptual relativism comprehensible. Davidson II 92 Quine: privileged access - Davidson Action/QuineVsDavidson: "well-swept ontology": not more than physical objects and classes. ((s) I.e. act not an object, but event) (>ontology). II 97 An identity statement "a = b" for events is true iff. a and b have identical causes and consequences. II 98 Idea: that the causal nexus of all events opens up a kind of system of coordinates similar to that of material things in space and time in which each event is unique. QuineVsDavidson: the criterion presupposes already that we know what it is yet to tell us. Causes and consequences are in turn events, and each event has exactly one place in the network. Infinite recourse. Thereupon Davidson rejects his idea. He takes over Quine's identity criterion for material objects: An identity statement "a = b" for material objects is only true if a and b have the same space-time coordinates. Quine II 56 Empiricism/Quine: stimuli do not make true, but lead to securitized beliefs. Quine: Davidson is right in that there is nothing to be added to Tarski when it comes to the concept of truth. QuineVsDavidson: However what I feel to be a fusion of truth and belief is that Davidson, when he speaks of "the totality of experience" and "surface irritation", makes no difference between these and the "facts" and the "world". Quine: Experience and surface irritation should not be the basis of truth, but the foundation of the securitized conviction. Empiricism: If empiricism is interpreted as a theory of truth, it is right that Davidson claims the third dogma to him and rejects it, fortunately this causes empiricism to go overboard as a truth theory. Empiricism: Empiricism remains a theory of evidence. However, minus the two old dogmas. Quine: the Third Dogma remains untouched: now, however, with respect to securitized beliefs! It has both a descriptive and a normative aspect. And in none of these aspects it seems to me like a dogma. This is what partially makes scientific theory empirical, not merely a quest for inner coherence. VI 57 Proximal/Distal/DavidsonVsQuine: the stimulus should rather be localized in the common world than at the private external surfaces of the object. The world should be the common cause. Rather a common situation than a rabbit or any object. We should make an ontology of situations our own. VI 58 Proximal/Distal/QuineVsDavidson: I prefer to stick to determining our stimuli by neural input. I#m particularly interested in the issue of transport of perception evidence from the nerve endings to the proclamation of the sciences. My naturalism would allow me (if not the interpreted individual) to relate freely to nerve endings, rabbits or any other physical objects. VI 59 "Common situations" are too vague for me. VI 62 Private Stimulus Meaning/QuineVsDavidson: I locate them still on the outer surfaces of the individual (proximal): hence its stimulus meanings also remain private. I would be completely indifferent if they turned out to be as idiosyncratic as the internal nervous structures of the individuals themselves! VI 63 In any case, outside in the open air we are dealing with our generally accessible language which each of us internalizes neurally in our own way. VI 136 Theory/Empirical Equivalence/Empirically Equivalent/Quine: we now restrict our consideration to global world systems to avoid the question of the integration of both theories in a general context. Ex So we imagine an alternative global system that is empirically equivalent to ours, but is based on exotic terms. VI 137 If this theory is as simple as ours, we eliminate all the exotic terms like "phlogiston" or "entelechy", since they have no predictive power. Here, then, in fact coherence considerations materialize! (>Coherence Theory). In fact, there are cases where we have recourse to elements foreign to the theory: Ex computers to solve the four-color problem, e.g. additional truths of the numbers, theory by digressions into analysis. Assuming the alternative theory is just as simple. But the exotic terms do not cover any newly added observable facts. VI 138 Quine: recommends the "secessionist" position: we should reject all the contexts in which exotic terms are used. With this unequal treatment we do not justify that our own theory is the more elegant one, but we can claim that we have no access to the truth beyond our own theory. The reverse position would be ecumenical: both theories would thus be simultaneously true. VI 139 Davidson: Variant: let both theories apply and understand the truth predicate so that it operates in an encompassing and theory-neutral language in which both theories are formulated quote-redeemingly. QuineVsDavidson: which raises questions with regard to the comprehensive language. The variables would have to extend further, but how much further? How about the truth? We must stop this at some point. We did not want a third theory. The secessionist position may as well recognize the same right of the competing global theories. It can still award the label of entitlement, if not the truth, impartially. VI 140 It can also switch between the two theories, and declare the terms of the other theory pointless for the time being while declaring their own to be true. XI 156 Event/Identity/QuineVsDavidson/Lauener: the identity of events is a pseudo-problem. |
Quine I W.V.O. Quine Word and Object, Cambridge/MA 1960 German Edition: Wort und Gegenstand Stuttgart 1980 Quine II W.V.O. Quine Theories and Things, Cambridge/MA 1986 German Edition: Theorien und Dinge Frankfurt 1985 Quine III W.V.O. Quine Methods of Logic, 4th edition Cambridge/MA 1982 German Edition: Grundzüge der Logik Frankfurt 1978 Quine V W.V.O. Quine The Roots of Reference, La Salle/Illinois 1974 German Edition: Die Wurzeln der Referenz Frankfurt 1989 Quine VI W.V.O. Quine Pursuit of Truth, Cambridge/MA 1992 German Edition: Unterwegs zur Wahrheit Paderborn 1995 Quine VII W.V.O. Quine From a logical point of view Cambridge, Mass. 1953 Quine VII (a) W. V. A. Quine On what there is In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (b) W. V. A. Quine Two dogmas of empiricism In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (c) W. V. A. Quine The problem of meaning in linguistics In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (d) W. V. A. Quine Identity, ostension and hypostasis In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (e) W. V. A. Quine New foundations for mathematical logic In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (f) W. V. A. Quine Logic and the reification of universals In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (g) W. V. A. Quine Notes on the theory of reference In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (h) W. V. A. Quine Reference and modality In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (i) W. V. A. Quine Meaning and existential inference In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VIII W.V.O. Quine Designation and Existence, in: The Journal of Philosophy 36 (1939) German Edition: Bezeichnung und Referenz In Zur Philosophie der idealen Sprache, J. Sinnreich (Hg) München 1982 Quine IX W.V.O. Quine Set Theory and its Logic, Cambridge/MA 1963 German Edition: Mengenlehre und ihre Logik Wiesbaden 1967 Quine X W.V.O. Quine The Philosophy of Logic, Cambridge/MA 1970, 1986 German Edition: Philosophie der Logik Bamberg 2005 Quine XII W.V.O. Quine Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York 1969 German Edition: Ontologische Relativität Frankfurt 2003 Quine XIII Willard Van Orman Quine Quiddities Cambridge/London 1987 Davidson I D. Davidson Der Mythos des Subjektiven Stuttgart 1993 Davidson V Donald Davidson "Rational Animals", in: D. Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford 2001, pp. 95-105 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Descartes, R. | Burge Vs Descartes, R. | Frank I 699 Reliability theoryVsSkepticism/Burge: some want to block the skepticism by denying seclusion principles. BurgeVsDescartes: I think we can be sure that we are not being deceived by any deus malignus. We derive this knowledge from our perception knowledge. This is not transcendental, as some authors believe. BurgeVsDescartes: the second stage judgment (reflective) simply inherits the content of the first-stage thought. E.g. "Water is a liquid": 1) you need the ability to think the empirical thought of the first stage, and 2) to attribute it to yourself at the same time. The knowledge of the content of the thoughts does not require an upstream separate examination of the conditions, just like the knowledge of the contents of perception does not require this. Fra I 700 One simply knows the thought by thinking it. We have no criterion, no phenomenon and no empiricism. I 705 BurgeVsDescartes: it is wrong to conceive one’s own thoughts as objects and to attribute a special faculty of infallibility to oneself. Either you introduce the new entity of an ability or special objects as new entities. OckhamVs. E.g. propositions which can only be thought if they have been fully understood, or ideas whose esse is their percipi. That would be objects about which no mistakes could be made, like items that could be seen at once from all sides. I 708 BurgeVsDescartes: main error: the difference between a-priori knowledge and authoritative self blurring knowledge of the first person. One has clearly no authority to know whether one of one’s own thoughts can be individuated or to explicated in a certain way. But one does not need this authority to know that one is thinking them. E.g. I can know that I have arthritis, and know that I think that without having clear criteria for arthritis. It is a truism that you have to understand what you think well enough to think of it. But this does not mean that such an understanding brings an ability to explication or substitution with it, nor that such an understanding is immune to errors. So you can know what your own thoughts are, even if you only understand them partially. DavidsonVs: that undermines the authority of the first person. BurgeVsDavidson: that is not necessary if a distinction is made between understanding and the ability to explicate. I 709 Explication: requires a higher degree of objectification: a conceptual mastery of the conditions that are the basis of your own thoughts and a conceptual mastery of the rules that you follow. Tyler Burge (1988a): Individualism and Self-Knowledge, in: The Journal of Philosophy 85 (1988), 649-663 |
Burge I T. Burge Origins of Objectivity Oxford 2010 Burge II Tyler Burge "Two Kinds of Consciousness" In Bewusstein, Thomas Metzinger Paderborn/München/Wien/Zürich 1996 Fra I M. Frank (Hrsg.) Analytische Theorien des Selbstbewusstseins Frankfurt 1994 |
| Descartes, R. | Leibniz Vs Descartes, R. | Leibniz I 35 "Clear and Distinct"/"Clare et Distincte"/LeibnizVsDescartes: Unsatisfactory, because not clearly determined. perception: either dark or clear Def clear: either confused or distinct Def distinct: either adequate or inadequate Def adequate: either symbolic or intuitive Def Absolute Knowledge [Vollkommene Erkenntnis]: if it is both adequate and intuitive at the same time Def dark: is a term that is not sufficient for recognition Def clear: is a term if it is sufficient for recognition Def confused: if insufficient indicators can be enumerated separately. ((s) can still be clear, see above). Def distinct: e.g. the coin assayers' idea of gold I 36 Def symbolic: If we do not see the whole essence of a thing all at once, and use symbols there, then knowledge is symbolic. Def intuitive: Is knowledge if it is nevertheless possible to think of different terms constituting the object at the same time (constituting as in "the object shows its terms itself"). Important argument: They are all operationalistic definitions, which is sensible if the terms cannot be dissected further. I 43 Knowledge/Thinking/LeibnizVsDescartes: He needs a true God (who is not a fraud) so that the self-confidence does not remain imprisoned in a content-free "pure thinking in itself". Leibniz: instead: reasoning by truth of fact, e.g. about the ontological status of the world. I 59 LeibnizVsDescartes: To refrain from falling into an irrational transcendental idealism, the rationality of facts must be proved. As such, Leibniz is definitely not a precursor of Kant! Construction/World/Experience/Rationality/Identity/Leibniz: The construction of Leibniz' ontology consist in two phases: 1. The possibility to deduce all meaningful, i.e. true and knowledge-contained sentences are shown by reducing them on identical sentences.(Deduction/Reduction). (Prädikative Evidenz). 2. The evidence of identity shall be proved itself as such in the world. The identity as the world's basis shall find its basis once again in the constitution of the world's being. I 78 Proof of God/LeibnizVsDescartes/Holz: Is similar to Descartes' proof of God, but modified. There is a difference between accepting God as author for the exterior or for the totality of the whole (and as such for the interior as well). I 80 Particulars/Leibniz: Depicts the effects of the interrelationship in itself and obtains the whole. Dual Inclusion: Of the particular in the whole and the whole in the particular. Problem: circular argument Solution/Descartes: Justification by God. LeibnizVsDescartes: This is not possible because metaphysics are based on a complete conjunction. Solution/Leibniz: The function of sensory perception cannot be deceived. I 99 Force/Passivity/Leibniz: Force is also the ability to adapt your own state to the changes of other substances. Sufferance [Erleiden] The original force is twofold: vis activa and vis passiva. Leibniz calls these "force points" also "metaphysical points". I 100 The original force is blocked from all sides by the individual substances which cannot unfold freely. So the derived forces are only modifications of the original force. Force/LeibnizVsDescartes: A simple expansion is not sufficient! Therefore, force needs to be added. I 101 The merely expanded mass does not carry a principle of qualitative differentiation since expansion is purely quantitative. Only then motion and change can happen. Nature needs to be explained from its own definition! I 102 Matter/LeibnizVsDescartes: Impenetrability is not sufficient! For Descartes the body was immobile. Substantial being needs a carrier. |
Lei II G. W. Leibniz Philosophical Texts (Oxford Philosophical Texts) Oxford 1998 |
| Descartes, R. | Locke Vs Descartes, R. | I 27 Innate ideas/LockeVsScholastics/LockeVsDescartes: there are no innate ideas! Neither in speculative nor in practical (moral, theological) thinking, not even in the form of "maxims", i.e. immediately plausible principles. 1. Speculative principles: if they were innate, they would have to be demonstrable in people not yet spoiled by prejudices, as, for example, in children or mentally weak people, and they are not! 2. If truths were innate in the form of sentences, then these would also have to be the associated terms, even the conclusions from these sentences! Such assumptions, however, extend the range of innate concepts and sentences into the impossible. 3. Maxims: the spontaneous consent to them means that they were not known before! But innate must always be present. ChomskyVsLocke/(s): would object that grammar rules also come into consciousness first. This is about the ease of learning). Innate ideas/Curls: the assumption that thinking begins with the application of innate laws of thought or first principles that are more than mere instrumental thinking is a deception. I 45 Body/Stretch/res extensa/LockeVsDescartes: stretch and body are therefore not identical! It is also not at all clear that the mind must let them be distinguished from the body. (Risked the dangerous accusation of materialism). The idea of expansion and the idea of the body are different. Expansion: does not include strength or resistance to movement (>inertia). Space: cannot be divided, otherwise surfaces would come up! VsCartesians: they have to admit that they either think of bodies as infinite in view of the infinity of space, or they have to admit that space cannot be identified with bodies. I 52 Res cogitans/LockeVsDescartes: Descartes: to strictly separate the world of bodies from the world of thought. Locke: mentions to consider whether there could not be extended things, thus bodies that think, something flowing matter particles. In any case, it cannot be ruled out that God in his omnipotence "matter systems" may have I 53 given or "overturned" the power of perception and thought. Contemporary theologies felt provoked by this, especially his Kontrahend Stillingfleet. LockeVsDescartes: also leads to problems with human identity (see below). I 54 Identity/LockeVsDescartes: Problem: the relationship between substance and person when the ability to think is attributed solely to an immaterial substance. For example, it would be conceivable that someone could be convinced that he was the same person as Nestor. If one now presupposes the correctness of the Cartesian thesis, I 55 it is conceivable that a contemporary human being is actually the person Nestor. But he is not the human being Nestor, precisely because the idea of the human cannot be detached from his physical form. That is abstruse for us today. (> Person/Geach). Locke relativizes the thesis by saying that it is not the nature of the substance that matters to consciousness, which is why he wants to leave this question open - he conveys the impression that he is inclined towards the materialistic point of view. II 189 Clarity/LockeVsDesacrtes: no truth criterion, but further meaning: also in the area of merely probable knowledge. II 190 Clarity/LockeVsLeibniz/LockeVsDescartes: linked to its namability. Assumes the possibility of a unique designation. (>Language/Locke). II 195 Knowledge/Locke: according to Locke, intuitive and demonstrative knowledge form a complete disjunction of possible certain knowledge. VsDescartes: this does not consist in a recognition of given conceptual contents, which takes place in their perception, but constitutes itself only on the empirical basis of simple ideas in the activity of understanding. |
Loc III J. Locke An Essay Concerning Human Understanding |
| Descartes, R. | Stegmüller Vs Descartes, R. | Stegmüller IV 370 Knowledge/Recognition Theory/Descartes/Stegmüller: Descartes was dissatisfied with the status of knowledge in his time. He wanted to strengthen it with his methodical doubt. IV 371 (i) I can without contradiction doubt the existence of my body, but not that of my consciousness as the bearer of my doubts. (ii) Cogito Principle: indisputable because of the fact that I recognize his truth clearly and unambiguously. (iii) God as a perfect being cannot deceive. Sensory illusions do not stem from God, they arise in the complicated physiological perceptual apparatus. Knowledge/Recognition Theory/VsDescartes/Stegmüller: 1. The status of the general rule remains unclear. It is at least threatened by the possibility of a deceiving God. Problem: either the rule is absolutely safe, then it is not threatened by a deus malignus, or it is not completely safe, then any thinking threatens it. 2. Cogito argument: based on the insight into the self-contradiction "I don't think now". IV 372 But that is a different clarity than that of mathematics and also that of the proof of God. From the Cogito argument the authority of clear and distinct thinking cannot be deduced! 3. From the fact that at first I can only conclude with certainty that I am a thinking being, it does not follow that my consciousness is a thinking substance and a thing different from my body. IV 373 MackieVsDescartes/Stegmüller: two points: 1. Descartes claims that perfection is a positive term, imperfection a negative one, which presupposes the former. IV 374 On the other hand, he himself admits that I cannot understand the infinity of God and that there is no independent idea of perfection in my mind. But then I can gain a positive understanding of my own imperfection, from which I in turn form the negative concept of perfection. I am in constant change and am aware of it. I could also say that the purely negative concept of freedom from all shortcomings is the only one available to me for the idea of omniscience. 2. MackieVsPlato/MackieVs ideal forms: Example: absolute straight line: such ideas could not come from the sensory perception, because no real distance is completely straight. They would then have to originate from the direct not sensual familiarity with ideal beings. However, we can very well have the idea of a curved line, which is gained from perception! Then we can also imagine that this stretch is less curved. I can then imagine a borderline case that could not be further freed from curvature. The idea of perfection can thus be explained in terms of its content entirely from the material of sensory perception and the understanding of negation. |
Carnap V W. Stegmüller Rudolf Carnap und der Wiener Kreis In Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie Bd I, München 1987 St IV W. Stegmüller Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie Bd 4 Stuttgart 1989 |
| Epistemology | Davidson Vs Epistemology | I (e) 96 Perception / cognition theory: There is an abundance of puzzles with regard to sensation and perception. But these puzzles are not of fundamental importance for the theory of knowledge. Although the sensory experience plays a major role in the causal process by which the beliefs of the world are connected, but it is a mistake to believe that it plays an epistemological role in determining the content of these beliefs! I (e) 97 We adopt the Third Dogma (separation scheme/content) and assert that empirical knowledge has no empirical basis and does not need one. >Perception/Davidson, >scheme/content. |
Davidson I D. Davidson Der Mythos des Subjektiven Stuttgart 1993 Davidson V Donald Davidson "Rational Animals", in: D. Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford 2001, pp. 95-105 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Evans, G. | McDowell Vs Evans, G. | I 73 Judgment/McDowellVsEvans: but the judgment only introduces new types of content! It simply confirms the conceptual content that originates from experience! Justification/McDowell: does not exist in a derivation of one content from another. A typical perceptual judgment makes a selection from a richer content, which is provided by experience. I 75 Experience/Evans: although it is non-conceptual (and therefore must be blind, according to Kant) he wants to protect it by claiming a "content." That is, the subject is to have an objective property of reality. Namely as an apparent view of the world. McDowellVsEvans: doesn't make sense without concepts. Evans: contrasts this with the demand: objects of perception must be supported by an "accompanying theory." McDowell: just that is spontaneity. Spontaneity/animal/McDowell: distinguishes us from animals that have no terms. I 80/81 Experience/Evans: their richness of detail cannot be captured by concepts! Ex many more shades of color perceptible than terms available. (S) maybe the term difference suffices if samples are available. McDowellVsEvans: Ex colors: fine grain: we should not assume that there is always a proof-sample. I 86 There must also be recognition involved. Thinking: certainly, there are thoughts that cannot necessarily put into words in a way that their content would thereby be completely determined. Concept/McDowellVsEvans: the tendency to apply a concept does not come out of the blue. If anyone makes a judgment, it is wrested from him by experience. I 87 Experience/judgment/McDowell: the connection between the two is that experiences provide grounds for judgments. That is, the tendency to use concepts does not mysteriously hover independently of the situation as in Evans. I 89 McDowellVsEvans: there is no reason for a disection into factors of similarity and difference. Instead, we can say that we possess something that animals possess too, namely the sensitivity of the perception of the characteristics of our surroundings. We are different from animals only in the sense that our sensitivity is incorporated into the realm of spontaneity. I 91 Sensuality/concepts/McDowellVsEvans: Sensuality is conceptual. Without this assumption one lapses into the myth of the given if one tries to look at the rational control of empirical thinking. |
McDowell I John McDowell Mind and World, Cambridge/MA 1996 German Edition: Geist und Welt Frankfurt 2001 McDowell II John McDowell "Truth Conditions, Bivalence and Verificationism" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell |
| Evans, G. | Peacocke Vs Evans, G. | I 169/170 Demonstratives/Evans: perceptually demonstrative ways of givenness are possible, because these conditions are fulfilled: in a normal perception situation, there is an information link between subject and object, and also the subject knows or is able to find out where the object is. If the subject has the general ability to know what propositions makes of the form "π = p" true for any π (where π is an identification of a public place without index words (in a non-indexical frame of reference)) if p is the notion of a place in its egocentric space. If it is also able to locate the object in its egocentric space, we can say that it has an idea of the object. Idea/Notion/Evans/Terminology/Intension/Way of Givenness/Peacocke: Evans "Idea" (notion) corresponds to my way of givenness "mode of presentation". Idea/Evans: Thesis: we can conceive the idea of an object a as consisting in its knowledge of what it is to be true for an arbitrary sentence of the form "δ = a". Peacocke: where "δ" is the area of the basic ideas of an object. Fundamental Idea/Evans: is what you have if you think of an object as the possessor of the fundamental ground of difference that it actually has. Peacocke: i.e. what distinguishes an object from all others. I.e. for material objects type and location. PeacockeVsEvans: we have already seen cases where the thinker was unable to locate the object in his egocentric space: E.g. the craters on the moon. I 171 E.g. apple in the mirror cabinet. But it still seems possible to think about it, for example, wonder where it is! It is true that it is possible to at least provide a rough direction in egocentric space, but that is hardly sufficient for the knowledge condition of Evans. In the case of the memory image, it is clearer that no localization in the current egocentric space is needed. pro Evans: there must be additional imaginable evidence, e.g. experience or tools for localization (if necessary, even space travel!). If that were not imaginable, we would have to assume that the subject was not able to think of the object in public space! pro Evans: an information link is not sufficient to think demonstratively about the object. VsEvans: but that is less than to demand that the thinker can locate the object at present. Weaker Requirement: Instead, a general ability of the subject can locate the object, if necessary, is sufficient. Evans: if you cannot locate an object, you can still think of it in the mixed demonstrative descriptive way of givenness: "that which causes my experience". But in normal cases this is a wrong description! Peacocke: it also seems to be wrong in the examples of the lunar craters, the apple in the mirror cabinet. PeacockeVsEvans: trange asymmetry: Idea/Evans: an idea a of a place in a self-centered space is an adequate idea of a place in the public space. Holistic/Evans: if an arbitrarily fundamental identification of a location is possible, it is holistic. (Varieties of reference, p. 162). Peacocke: this knowledge is grounded in a general ability to put a cognitive map of the objective spatial world over our own egocentric space. I 172 E.g. in some cases this will not be possible, for example, when you are kidnapped, or ended up in an unknown area, etc. Point: even in such cases, you can still use the demonstrative pronoun "here" (in reference to objects). I.e. the thoughts are still thoughts about public space! ((s) and the self-centered space). Idea/Demonstrative Way of Givenness/PeacockeVsEvans: so his theory does not demand any ability to give a public, non-egocentric individuation our thoughts to have thoughts about a place in the public space at all. Analogy/Peacocke: exactly analogous objections can be made in the case of demonstrative ways of givenness: E.g. Suppose a subject perceives an object of type F in the manner H. Then F is the token way of givenness. Then we can introduce: [W, Fs] for the perceptual "this F". Then there is exactly one proposition of the form "p = localization of [W, Fs] now", which is true, and the subject knows what it is for it that it is true for it. PeacockeVsEvans: why should we demand here, but not in the earlier example, that the subject also knows which p (or which in the earlier case) is mentioned in this one true proposition? This is particularly absurd in the case of the lost subject. PeacockeVsEvans: his theory allows that [W, Fs] is an adequate idea here, although the subject has no fundamental idea of the object. Peacocke: but if we insisted that it could have a fundamental idea if he had more evidence, then why is an analogous possibility not also sufficient for adequacy in terms of the egocentric space? I 173 There seem to be only two uniform positions: 1) Identification/Localization/Idea/Demonstratives/Liberal Position: sufficient for a genuine way of givenness or adequate ideas are the general ability of localization plus uniqueness of the current localization in the relevant space. 2) Strict position: this is neither sufficient for genuine ways of givenness nor for adequate ideas. PeacockeVs: this can hardly be represented as a unified theory: it means that, if you are lost, you cannot think about the objects that you see around you. That would also mean to preclude a priori that you as a kidnapped person can ask the question "Which city is this?". Demonstratives/Peacocke: Thesis: I represent the uniformly liberal position Demonstratives/Evans: Thesis: is liberal in terms of public space and strictly in terms of egocentric space! ad 1): does not deny the importance of fundamental ideas. If a subject is neither able to locate an object in the public nor in egocentric space ((s) E.g. he wakes up from anesthesia and hears a monaural sound), then it must still believe that this object has a fundamental identification. Otherwise it would have to assume that there is no object there. Anscombe: E.g. a subject sees two matchboxes through two holes which (are manipulated) so arranged that it sees only one box, then the subject does not know what it means for the sentence "this matchbox is F" to be true. The uniformly liberal view allows the subject to use demonstratives which depend on mental images, even if it has no idea where in the public space and when it has encountered the object. EvansVs: representatives of this position will say that the knowledge of the subject is at least partial, I 174 because this idea causally results from an encounter with the object. But that makes their position worse instead of better: for it completely twists the grammar and logic of the concept of knowing what it is for the subject that p is true. Ability/PeacockeVsEvans: but a capability can also consist in the experience of finding out the right causal chains in a given environment: the same goes for the localization of an object point seen in the mirror in egocentric space. PeacockeVsEvans: his distinction seems unreal: it may be simultaneously true that someone has a relation R to the object due to causal relations, and be true that the possibility of being in this relation R is a question of the abilities of the subject. E.g. (Evans) to recognize the ball: Peacocke: this is not a sensory motor skill, but rather the ability to draw certain conclusions, which however require an earlier encounter. This also applies to e.g. the cognitive map, which is placed over the egocentric space: PeacockeVsEvans: in both cases it does not follow that the presented object, remembered or perceived, is thought of explicitly in causal terms: the way of givenness is truly demonstrative. First Person/PeacockeVsEvans: the second major objection concerns thoughts of the first person: the different examples of immunity to misidentification, which contain the first person, roughly break down into two groups: a) here, immunity seems absolute: E.g. "I am in pain". I 175 b) Here, the immunity seems to depend on presuppositions about the world: if these assumptions are wrong, they open the possibility of picking out something wrong without stopping to use the word "I". These include: E.g. "I was on the ocean liner": memory image. E.g. "I sit at the desk": visual, kinesthetic, tactile perceptions. The distinction between a) and b) may be made by the constitutive role: "The person with these conscious states." Infallibility/Tradition/Evans: (absolutely immune judgments): the judgment to be a judgment of a specific content can be constituted by the fact that this judgement responds to this state. Peacocke pro. PeacockeVsEvans: Problem: can this infallibility be connected to the rest of Evans' theory? Because: I/Evans: Thesis: the reference of "I" may fail! Peacocke: how is that compatible with the absolute immunity of "I am in pain"? Conditionalisation: does not help: E.g. "if I exist, I am in pain" that cannot fulfill the purpose: the existence of the idea still needs the reference of "I". Similarly: E.g. "If my use of "I" refers, I am in pain": because "my use" must be explained in terms of the first person. Question: Can we use memory demonstratives which refer to previous use of first-person ways of givenness? E.g. "If those earlier uses of "I" speak, I am in pain." (Point: not "my uses"). PeacockeVs: that does not help: Descartes' evil demon could have suggested you the memories of someone else. (>Shoemaker: q-memories.) I 176 Constitutive Role/Brains in the Vat/BIV/EvansVsPeacocke: the constitutive role of [self] would not explain why the brains in the vat would be able to speak in a demonstrative way about their own experiences: Mental States/Evans: differ from all other states and objects in that they refer demonstratively to their owners. Pain is identified as an element of the objective order. Then someone can have no adequate idea of these mental states if he does not know to which person they happen. Peacocke: we can even concede thoughts about its pain to the brain in a vat, provided that it can give a fundamental identification of the person who has the pain. Peacocke: No, the nerves must be wired correctly. I.e. this is not true for the brains in the vat. So we can stick to the liberal point of view and at the constitutive role and the idea of a person. Also to the fact that the mental states are individuated on the person who has them. Individuation/Mental States/PeacockeVsEvans: not through localization (like with material objects), but through the person. I 177 E.g. Split-Brain Patient/Peacocke: here we can speak of different, but qualitatively equivalent experiences. From this could follow two centers of consciousness in a single brain. But: after the surgery we should not say that one of the two was the original and the other one was added later. E.g. olfactory sensation of the left and right nostril separate. Then there are actually separate causes for both experiences. ((s), but the same source.) Peacocke: it does not follow that in normal brains two consciousnesses work in harmony. Here, the sense of smell is caused by simultaneous input through both nostrils and is thus overdetermined. |
Peacocke I Chr. R. Peacocke Sense and Content Oxford 1983 Peacocke II Christopher Peacocke "Truth Definitions and Actual Languges" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell Oxford 1976 |
| Fichte, J.G. | Castaneda Vs Fichte, J.G. | Frank I 211 Experience/CastanedaVsFichte: do not need to belong to Is (plural of I) But if they do, so the integration in the I requires unity of the experiences in its possession. Likewise CastanedaVsKant: against the role of apperception, instead: vice versa! Fichte: demands that the unity of consciousness contents transmits itself top down, from the self that experiences itself through experiencing, on the contents, which belong to the non-self. Castaneda: that contradicts the facts of experience and prevents an explanation of animal consciousness. VsFichte: unwarranted mixing of external and internal reflexivity! I 239 Consciousness/Accumulation/Subsumption/Castaneda: assuming the subsumtiven nature of consciousness, lower levels can exist irrespective of the higher levels. CastanedaVsFichte: not every consciousness is self-consciousness. This is the anti-idealistic naturalization of consciousness. The unity of consciousness episode cannot be explained, because this consciousness belongs to a self or I. In fact, the unity of experience in an I requires the unity of any consciousness content! That means if a consciousness episode internally belongs to an I, then the unity of that consciousness is an element in the constitution of this affiliation, i.e. it is an internal requirement of the existence of that I. Castaneda: nevertheless Fichte’s view is still widely spread, even among anti-Cartesian philosophers of our time. Consciousness/Fichte: "Wissenschaftslehre nova methoda, 1798, 1982, p 34" "All consciousness is accompanied by an immediate self-consciousness"... I 244 Perception/Physiology/Castaneda: in complex cases, a kind of blind physical monitoring arises from finely tuned adaptation. This includes such things as the presentation of stimulus levels. This works even without the emergence of visualizations of the monitoring itself. VsFichte: Then consciousness without self-consciousness would exist (s.c.). Of course there can be recording systems. However, this recording is not identical with s.c. Fra I 331 Consciousness/CastanedaVsChisholm: everybody first refers to their own world (as per Chisholm), but from that does not follow the necessity that every consciousness and every thought are explicitly self-conscious. (CastanedaVsFichte). The first-person perspective is only implicitly contained in a non-reflexive consciousness. An explicit self-consciousness differs from this consciousness, however, if it refers to conscious explicit self-reference. Consciousness/CastanedaVsFichte: is only a special case of consciousness, it is not present in every consciousness episode. E.g. purely sensitive consciousness, e.g. cognitive, but not self-conscious (>E.g. Friedrich watches the bees). Not only evolutionarily differentiated, but also in adults. Hector-Neri Castaneda (1989): Self-Consciousness, I-Structures and Physiology, in: Manfred Spitzer/Brendan A. Maher (eds.) (1989): Philosophy and Psychopathology, Berlin/Heidelberg/New York 1989, 118-145 |
Cast I H.-N. Castaneda Phenomeno-Logic of the I: Essays on Self-Consciousness Bloomington 1999 Fra I M. Frank (Hrsg.) Analytische Theorien des Selbstbewusstseins Frankfurt 1994 |
| Fodor, J. | Peacocke Vs Fodor, J. | I 208 Perception/Mentalese/MT/Fodor: what happens in perception, is a description of the environment in a vocabulary is not expressible, that refers to the values of physical variables. E.g. "A butterfly is on the lawn" Instead, in Mentalese we shall speak of "light being the magnitude of the retina and region L". PeacockeVsFodor/PeacockeVsMentalese: what is actually the token of Mentalese, that refers to this localization L? There seems to be nothing there. E.g. a different retina area could supply information about a different localization, as well as the original cell. I 209 But that leads to no difference within Mentalese! There is only a difference of the relata: one refers causally to one area of the retina, the other to another one. VsPeacocke: it could be argued that something like "foggy" ("it's foggy here") corresponds to the individual spots. "Foggy" then has no relevant syntactic structure, but when it occurs in a statement, it will refer to a specific place and time. In fact, several central units of the nervous system must somehow receive non-indexical information from the periphery: E.g. someone who receives one hundred telegrams: "it is bright here", "it is raining here", etc. is not in a position to draw a map if he does not know where the telegrams come from. Peacocke: but an indexical strategy cannot work for more complex contents. A given nerve cell may be neurophysiologically indistinguishable from another one, with completely different content conditions for firing. Trivialization/Mentalese: but if these relations should count as part of the syntactic structure of a (mental) state, then the language of the mind is trivialized. There would be no true sentence analogs. Mentalese/perception/Fodor/Peacocke: a similar argument is about e.g. approved detectors for lines, deep within the perceptual system: these suggest causal relations for perceptions. But possession of a structured content does not require a corresponding physical structure in the state, but there may be in the pattern of relations in which the state stands. Peacocke: a model that satisfies this relational paradigm, but does not require Mentalese must meet several conditions: 1) How can propositional content be ascribed without referring to syntactic structures? I.e. relatively complex contents must be attributed to syntactically unstructured (mental) states. 2) It must be shown how these states interact with perception and behavior. I 215 Computation/Language/Mentalese/PeacockeVsFodor: not even computation (calculation of behavior and perception) seems to require language: E.g. question whether the acting person should do φ. Fodor: E.g. the actor is described as computing the anticipated benefit of φ-s under the condition C. Peacocke: the extent to which the subject has the corresponding belief "C given that I φ" may consist in the presence of a corresponding physical state to a certain extent. That would in turn only be a matter of pure relations! The same applies to reaching the state "C and I φ". The states can interact without requiring syntactic structures. Def Computation/Peacocke: (calculation) is a question of states with content that emerge systematically from each other. This requires certain patterns of order and of causal relations, but no syntactic structure. PeacockeVsFodor: it does not necessary apply: "No representation, no computation". I 215/216 Mentalese/Fodor: (Language of Thought, p. 199) Thesis: there can be no construction of psychology without assuming that organisms possess a proper description as instantiation (incarnation) of another formal system: "proper" requires: a) there must be a general procedure for the attribution of character formulas (assigning formulae) to states of the organism b) for each propositional attitude there must be a causal state of the organism so that c1) the state is interpretable as relation to a formula and c2) it is nomologically necessary and sufficient (or contingently identical) to have these propositional attitudes. d) Mental representations have their causal roles by virtue of their formal properties. VsMentalese/PeacockeVsFodor: we can have all of this without Mentalese! Either: 1) There are really sentence analogues in the brain or: 2) Fodor's condition could be met otherwise: there could be a semantics that is correlated with Frege's thoughts. |
Peacocke I Chr. R. Peacocke Sense and Content Oxford 1983 Peacocke II Christopher Peacocke "Truth Definitions and Actual Languges" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell Oxford 1976 |
| Frege, G. | Dummett Vs Frege, G. | Brandom II 74 Frege (late): representation of independent reality DummettVsFrege: Falsely: property of sentences instead of transitions between them. Brandom II 173 Frege, late: sentences are singular terms! Predicates: frames. (DummettVsFrege: the disregards the specific nature of the sentences to be moves in the language game BrandomVsDummett:. As if Frege had no idea about Fregean force). Dummett I 15 Frege’s basic idea: Extraction of the concept (in the sense of the definition of 1890) by decomposition of a complete thought. (Begriffsschrift)(1). I 51 DummettVsFrege: It is questionable, however, whether this term can be explained without referring to the concept of the sentence. One must, for example, not only identify a proper noun in a sentence, but also be able to replace it in this position. How to explain the "occurrence" of the meaning of a name in a thought without relying on the form of its linguistic expression, is not clear. Frege: The meaning of every partial expression should be the contribution of this subexpression for determining this condition. DummettVsFrege: So we must know, contrary to Frege’s official theory, what it means that a proposition is true, before we can know what it means that it expresses a thought; before we can know what it means that an expression makes sense, we need to know what it means that it has a reference. Tradition: It used to be argued: as long as the meaning is the way of givenness of the reference object, there can, if no object is present, be no corresponding way of givenness and therefore no meaning (Evans, McDowell). DummettVsFrege: The difficulty is triggered by the fact that Frege strictly equates the semantic value of a singular term and the object to which it is intended to refer. The slogan "Without semantic value no meaning" is impressive, but it can only be accepted at the price of admitting that a singular term without reference still has a semantic value which then presumably consists in the mere fact of the absence of a reference. Husserl has no doubts in this regard. He generalizes the concept of meaning and transfers it from expressing acts to all acts of consciousness. For this generalized term Husserl uses the term "noema". DummettVsFrege: That does not show that the thesis the meaning (thought, see above) was not a content of consciousness is wrong, but rather that its reasoning, namely the communicability and consequent objectivity do not quite apply. Dummett I 61 DummettVsFrege: For an incommunicable meaning which refers to a private sentiment, would, contrary to the sensation itself, not belong to the content of consciousness. DummettVsFrege: Independence from sensation is necessary for objectivity: E.g. color words, opaque surface, a color-blind person recognizes by this that others see the color. I 63. Frege: "Red" does not only refer to a physical property, but to a perceptible property (it appears as red to perople with normal vision). If we explained "appears red" with "is red", however, we are no longer able to do this the other way around. DummettVsFrege: The modified version by Frege is unsatisfactory, because it gives the word "red" a uniform reference, but attributes a different meaning to it, depending on the speaker. I 64 Intension/Frege: "parallel to the straight line" different from "same direction as the straight line", DummettVs: Here, one must know the concept of direction or not "whatever value" other sense than "value curve" DummettVs: Here, the concept of value curve must be known or not. special case of the Basic Law V from which Russell antinomy arises. I 79 Meaning: Contradictory in Frege: on the one hand priority of thought over language, on the other hand, it is not further explained. I 90 ++ - Language/Thinking/Perception I 93 + - DummettVsFrege, DummettVsHusserl: both go too far if they make the linguistic ideas expressed similar to "interpretation". I 104 - Thoughts/DummettVsFrege: not necessarily linguistic: Proto thoughts (also animals) (linked to activity) - Proto thoughts instead of Husserl’s noema. I 106 Frege: Grasping of the Thought: directly through the consciousness, but not content of the consciousness - DummettVs: contradictory: Grasping is an ability, therefore background (both episodically and dispositionally) I 122 - DummettVs Equating the literal meaning with the thought module. I 124 + DummettVsFrege: all thoughts and ideas can be communicated! Because they only appear in a particular way - by this determination they are communicable I 128. 1. G. Frege, Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens, Halle 1879, Neudruck in: Ders. Begriffsschrift und andere Aufsätze, hrsg. v. J. Agnelli, Hildesheim 1964 |
Dummett I M. Dummett The Origins of the Analytical Philosophy, London 1988 German Edition: Ursprünge der analytischen Philosophie Frankfurt 1992 Dummett II Michael Dummett "What ist a Theory of Meaning?" (ii) In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell Oxford 1976 Dummett III M. Dummett Wahrheit Stuttgart 1982 Dummett III (a) Michael Dummett "Truth" in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 59 (1959) pp.141-162 In Wahrheit, Michael Dummett Stuttgart 1982 Dummett III (b) Michael Dummett "Frege’s Distiction between Sense and Reference", in: M. Dummett, Truth and Other Enigmas, London 1978, pp. 116-144 In Wahrheit, Stuttgart 1982 Dummett III (c) Michael Dummett "What is a Theory of Meaning?" in: S. Guttenplan (ed.) Mind and Language, Oxford 1975, pp. 97-138 In Wahrheit, Michael Dummett Stuttgart 1982 Dummett III (d) Michael Dummett "Bringing About the Past" in: Philosophical Review 73 (1964) pp.338-359 In Wahrheit, Michael Dummett Stuttgart 1982 Dummett III (e) Michael Dummett "Can Analytical Philosophy be Systematic, and Ought it to be?" in: Hegel-Studien, Beiheft 17 (1977) S. 305-326 In Wahrheit, Michael Dummett Stuttgart 1982 Bra I R. Brandom Making it exlicit. Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment, Cambridge/MA 1994 German Edition: Expressive Vernunft Frankfurt 2000 Bra II R. Brandom Articulating reasons. An Introduction to Inferentialism, Cambridge/MA 2001 German Edition: Begründen und Begreifen Frankfurt 2001 |
| Freud, S. | Searle Vs Freud, S. | I 175 SearleVsFreud: it is clear that we envision the unconscious along the lines of the subconscious. The unconscious in Freud is based on a fairly simple model of conscious states. Like fish deep down in the sea. The fish that we cannot see below the surface, have exactly the same shape when they come to the surface. They are like objects that are stored in the dark attic of the mind. Could there be unconscious pain? >Unconscious. I 188 Example Suppose we have a case in which we had use for terms "unconscious pain". Shall we say that during sleep actually no pain was present, that it rather only began at opening? I 189 Or that it continued, was however unconscious during sleep? Searle: here it is not about a dispute with a tangible content. There is simply a different vocabulary to describe the same fact. Freudians insist that there really are unconscious mental states. The other side says that conditions in which there really are mental states, then surely must be conscious. I 190 But what facts in the world are to meet these two different statements? E.g. someone crawls under hypnosis around on the floor. After waking up, he turns a seemingly rational explanation: like, that he would have probably lost his watch somewhere. Question: what is the ontology of the unconscious supposed to be exactly in this moment? What kind of a fact corresponds to the attribution? Example The reason of the adolescent boy who revolted against the authority of the school is that he hates his father, so they say. Nevertheless, we have to ask again: what is the ontology of the unconscious supposed to be as long as it is unconscious? I 190/191 As with hypnosis, it must be also implied here that in neurophysiology the ability exists to produce a conscious thought with precisely this aspect figure. (SearleVsFreud). Then apparently the ontological question "do unconscious mental states really exist?" cannot have any factual substance. The question can only mean: there are non-conscious neurophysiological states of the brain that are able to develop conscious thoughts and the corresponding behavior. That was not a point of contention in ontological reality. Def Consciousness: manner of perception of states that are in their mode of existence unconsciously. Freud thinks that our unconscious minds are at once both unconsciously and intrinsically intentional, even if they are unconscious, they are actually present. They are like furniture in the attic of the mind that we spotlight with the torches of our perception. >Consciousness. I 193 SearleVsFreud: 1. is not to reconcile with what we know about the brain. 2. can I not formulate the comparison between perception and consciousness so that it is coherent. Regarding 1.: Suppose I go through a sequence of unconscious mental states without having any consciousness, then only neurophysiological processes are playing. What a fact is it now to make that they are unconscious mental states? If we consider what characteristics must have unconscious mental states as mental states: 1. an aspect shape, 2. they must be "subjectively" in any sense. But how can the unconscious neurophysiology at the times during which it is unconscious have aspect shape and subjectivity? Freud obviously means that there are also still some description level at which they invariably have all the features of conscious mental states, despite their complete unconsciousness (also intentionality and subjectivity). I 194 The unconscious has everything the conscious has only minus consciousness. He has, however, not made to understand what might happen in the brain via the neurophysiological events out of events to form unconscious subjectivity and intentionality. Freud's evidence for the existence of the unconscious is always the patient's behavior, that it is as if he was in a certain state of mind. And because we know it independently, that the patient has no conscious mental state of this kind, Freud postulated an unconscious state of mind. A verificationist would say that this postulate has only one meaning: the patient behaves in such and such a manner, and such behavior would usually be caused by a state of consciousness. But Freud is no verificationist. It's hard for to find an interpretation which implies no dualism, since Freud does not postulate neurophysiological mental phenomena. It looks as if this opinion has the consequence that consciousness is something completely externalistic. So nothing much what is linked to any state of consciousness. The analogy between consciousness and perception is an attempt to let the consciousness still fit into the picture. I 195 We are forced to postulate that consciousness is a kind of perception of conditions and events that have their intrinsic nature unconsciously. However, this solution leads us from bad to worse. In the investigation of introspection we had seen that the model of perception based on the fact that there is a difference between perceived object and perceptual. If I take away the bike, a perception remains to me that has no object (a hallucination, for example). But precisely this distinction we cannot do in the case of conscious thought. There seems to be an infinite regress: what about the act of perception: is it a mental phenomenon? If so, it has to "per se" be unconscious, and then I would probably need some higher stage of act of perception of my act of perception to be aware of this act. >Perception. I 195/196 Recent problems with this analogy: perception works because the object perceived exerts causal effect on my nervous system. But how can this work in the case where the object perceived is an unconscious experience itself? |
Searle I John R. Searle The Rediscovery of the Mind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1992 German Edition: Die Wiederentdeckung des Geistes Frankfurt 1996 Searle II John R. Searle Intentionality. An essay in the philosophy of mind, Cambridge/MA 1983 German Edition: Intentionalität Frankfurt 1991 Searle III John R. Searle The Construction of Social Reality, New York 1995 German Edition: Die Konstruktion der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit Hamburg 1997 Searle IV John R. Searle Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge/MA 1979 German Edition: Ausdruck und Bedeutung Frankfurt 1982 Searle V John R. Searle Speech Acts, Cambridge/MA 1969 German Edition: Sprechakte Frankfurt 1983 Searle VII John R. Searle Behauptungen und Abweichungen In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Searle VIII John R. Searle Chomskys Revolution in der Linguistik In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Searle IX John R. Searle "Animal Minds", in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1994) pp. 206-219 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Grice, P.H. | Loar Vs Grice, P.H. | I 1 Language/everyday language/concept/theory/explanation/pragmatic/Loar: all pragmatic concepts are ultimately based on belief. Loar: Thesis: my approach (chapter 9) is reductionist: 1. Semantic characteristics are based on beliefs and desires. (Similar to Grice). LoarVsGrice: my approach is not only communication theoretical: LoarVsAll: the theories of beliefs can serve as a basis for the semantic theory of "language of thought" (most authors: the other way around!) 2. My explanation of belief and desires is not based on I 2 Propositions or semantic concepts. Meaning/Loar: propositional attitudes can therefore serve non-circularly as a basis for meaning. Belief/Conviction/Wish/Desire/Loar: Thesis: can be explained without assuming everyday semantics. Thinking/Language/Loar: but this should not assume thinking without language, i.e. language as a mere vehicle of communication: Belief/Loar: Thesis: is not a linguistic state. content/Loar: even if belief were a linguistic state, its content could be analyzed independently of its linguistic aspects. Solution/Loar: explanation through behaviour and perception. |
Loar I B. Loar Mind and Meaning Cambridge 1981 Loar II Brian Loar "Two Theories of Meaning" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell Oxford 1976 |
| Hintikka, J. | Lewis Vs Hintikka, J. | V 275 Seeing/Visual Experience/Hintikka: Content of the visual experience: Set of alternative possibilities. LewisVsHintikka: We must modify this in order to satisfy the self-ascription: Visual alternatives are not possible worlds, but possible individuals in worlds. The subject believes that it belongs to a set of alternative individuals. Identification/Hintikka: cross-identification through perception. IV 42 Essentialism/Lewis: current discussion: the perfect conformity between the >counterpart (c.p.) and its original (Hintikka). LewisVsHintikka: I simply call this >similarity. Cf. >essentialism. This is exactly the c.p.r. we need in order to look at Kripke's example of Hitler who could have led an honest life. >Counterpart relation: Not only its vagueness can be handled differently in varied contexts, we can also pit different counterpart relations against each other. It is better to accept numerous relations than numerous entities! E.g. relations which either ascertain comparative or absolute similarities. |
Lewis I David K. Lewis Die Identität von Körper und Geist Frankfurt 1989 Lewis I (a) David K. Lewis An Argument for the Identity Theory, in: Journal of Philosophy 63 (1966) In Die Identität von Körper und Geist, Frankfurt/M. 1989 Lewis I (b) David K. Lewis Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications, in: Australasian Journal of Philosophy 50 (1972) In Die Identität von Körper und Geist, Frankfurt/M. 1989 Lewis I (c) David K. Lewis Mad Pain and Martian Pain, Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. 1, Ned Block (ed.) Harvard University Press, 1980 In Die Identität von Körper und Geist, Frankfurt/M. 1989 Lewis II David K. Lewis "Languages and Language", in: K. Gunderson (Ed.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. VII, Language, Mind, and Knowledge, Minneapolis 1975, pp. 3-35 In Handlung, Kommunikation, Bedeutung, Georg Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1979 Lewis IV David K. Lewis Philosophical Papers Bd I New York Oxford 1983 Lewis V David K. Lewis Philosophical Papers Bd II New York Oxford 1986 Lewis VI David K. Lewis Convention. A Philosophical Study, Cambridge/MA 1969 German Edition: Konventionen Berlin 1975 LewisCl Clarence Irving Lewis Collected Papers of Clarence Irving Lewis Stanford 1970 LewisCl I Clarence Irving Lewis Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge (Dover Books on Western Philosophy) 1991 |
| Introspection | Verschiedene Vs Introspection | Metz II 413 Introspection/Güzeldere: it is a mistake to want to look into a person's head in order to find out the content of their introspective awareness. E.g. Armstrong's truck driver: if he had information about his intrinsic brain characteristics, he would not be enlightened about his situation. All this has a lot to do with intrinsic brain traits, but none of it has to include one's own awareness. Metz II 425 Irrefutable Fact/Consciousness/Rosenthal/Dennett: there is simply no "irrefutable fact" as to whether the initial stimulus will ever become conscious. Introspection cannot decide this. Tetens IV 49 Perception/Introspection/Tetens: in order to know that I am perceiving, I do not have to separately "inspect my inner being" first. |
Tetens I H. Tetens Geist, Gehirn, Maschine Stuttgart 1994 W VII H. Tetens Tractatus - Ein Kommentar Stuttgart 2009 |
| Kant | Rorty Vs Kant | I 166 Synthesis/Synthesis/Kant/Rorty: an object, something that is true for multiple predicates, is always the result of synthesis. RortyVsKant: Kant's conception of cognition did not have perception as a model. Unfortunately, he still remained in a Cartesian frame of reference: he still formulated it in response to the question of how we can move from inner to the outer space. His paradoxical answer was that the outer space will constructed from the material of ideas. >Cartesianism, >dualism. I 169 Naturalism/Rorty: musing of psychologists about stimuli and responses. (This is not philosophical, because it does not look for causes.) (RortyVsKant: confuses cause and reason here). I 171 Kant/Rorty: accepted that you must not equate the individual judgment with "the individuality of a sensibly given". RortyVsKant: he would have had to proceed to conceive knowledge as a relation between persons and >propositions. Then he not would have needed the concept of synthesis. He could have considered the person as a black box. I 173 Concept/Rorty: we want to know if concepts are connectors. VsKant: the information that they cannot be if it were not for a number of synthesis waiting views, does not help us. RortyVsKant: either machinery (synthesis) and raw material (views) are noumenal or they are phenomenal. a) if the two are phenomenal, we can be aware of them (contrary to the conditions of deduction). If they are b) noumenal, we cannot know anything about them, not even the statements of deduction! I 174 Copernican Revolution/RortyVsKant: it is no longer attractive for us. Because the statement that knowledge of necessary truths is more understandable for manufactured than for found objects depends on the Cartesian assumption that we have privileged access to our activity of making. IV 117 Comprehensibility/Noumenon/Thing in Itself/Kant/RortyVsKant/Rorty: with him the concept of noumenon becomes incomprehensible in that he says, an expression is meaningful if it stands for a spiritual content which forms the synthesis of sensual perceptions through a concept. ((s) through the synthesis of the sensible to the spiritual). VI 256 Ethics/Morality/RortyVsKant: it will never be possible to justify his good suggestion for secularization of the Christian doctrine of the brotherhood of man with neutral criteria. VI 257 This is not because they are not reasonable enough, but because we live in a world in which it would simply be too risky, yes often insanely dangerous, to grasp the sense of the moral community to the point that it goes beyond the own family or tribe. It is useless to say by Kant "recognize the brother in the other": the people we are trying to convince will not understand. They would feel offended if we asked them to treat someone with whom they are not related like a brother or to treat an unbeliever like a believer. VI 263 Def "Supernaturalism"/Santayana: the confusion of ideals and power. RortyVsKant: that is the only reason behind Kant's thesis that it is not only more friendly but also more reasonable not to exclude strangers. RortyVsKant: Nietzsche is quite right in connecting Kant's insistence with resentment. VI 264 RortyVsNietzsche: he is absolutely wrong in regarding Christianity and democracy as a sign of degeneration. With Kant he has an idea of "purity" in common that Derrida calls "phallogocentrism". This also applies to Sartre: Sartre: the perfect synthesis of In itself and For itself can only succeed if we free ourselves from the slimy, sticky, humid, sentimental, effeminate. |
Rorty VI Richard Rorty Truth and Progress, Cambridge/MA 1998 German Edition: Wahrheit und Fortschritt Frankfurt 2000 |
| Kant | Strawson Vs Kant | Rorty VI 359 StrawsonVskKant/Rorty: shows that thanks to the progress since Kant some concepts are no longer that attractive: e.g. "in the mind", "created by the mind" (Wittgenstein, Ryle have dissuaded us from this). --- Strawson V 9 StrawsonVsKant: appears to violate his own principles by attempting to set sense limits from a point which is outside of them, and that, if they are properly marked, cannot exist. --- V 16 Continuous determination/Kant/Strawson: everywhere through the mind guaranteed applicability of the concepts. StrawsonVsKant: seed for the disastrous model of determination of the whole universe. --- V 19 StrawsonVsKant: this one had unlimited confidence in a certain complicated and symmetrical scheme, which he freely adopted from the formal logic as he understood it, and forced upon this the whole extent of his material. --- V 23 StrawsonVsKant: this one is constantly trying to squeeze out more of the arguments in the analogies than there is. --- V 25 StrawsonVsKant: the whole deduction is logically incorrect. The connection to the analysis is thin and is, if at all, brought about by the concept of "synthesis". --- V 37 Dialectic/Kant: primary goal: exposing the metaphysical illusion. Instrument: the principle of sense. Certain ideas that do not have any empirical application, are sources of appearance, yet they can have a useful or even necessary function for the extension of empirical knowledge. E.g. we think of internal states of affair, as if they were states of affair of an immaterial substance. ("regulative ideas"). StrawsonVsKant: which is obviously quite implausible. But why did he represent it? --- V 29 StrawsonVsKant: It is not clear that there is no empirical mediation of antinomies. --- V 32 Kant: I really appear to myself in the time but I do not really appear to myself in time. StrawsonVsKant: incomprehensible what "to appear" means here. It is no defense of an incomprehensible doctrine to say that its incomprehensibility is guaranteed by a product obtained from its principle. --- V 33/34 Space/time/StrawsonVsKant: Kant: things themselves not in space and time. Strawson: thereby the whole doctrine becomes incomprehensible. --- V 35 Synthetically a priori/StrawsonVsKant: Kant himself has no clear conception of what he means with it. The whole theory is not necessary. Instead, we should focus on an exploration and refining of our knowledge and social forms. --- V 36 Limit/StrawsonVsKant: to set the coherent thinking limits it is not necessary to think from both sides of these limits as Kant tried despite his denials. --- V 49 Space/Kant: our idea of space is not recovered from the experience, because the experience already presupposes the space. StrawsonVsKant: that is simply tautological. If "to presuppose" means more than a simple tautology, then the argument is not enlightening. --- V 50 StrawsonVsKant: he himself admits that it is contradictory to represent a relational view of space and time and to deny its transcendental ideality at the same time. --- V 58 StrawsonVsKant: there are the old debates about "inherent" ideas of space and time. They are unclear. There is the argument that the acquisition of skills presupposes the ability to acquire skills. Experience/space/time/properties/Kant/Strawson: problem: the manifestation of the corresponding trait in experience, his appearance in the world, can be ascribed only to our cognitive abilities, the nature of our skills, not to the things themselves. StrawsonVsKant: problem: then these ideas must themselves be prior to all experience in us. --- V 66 Categories/Strawson: we have to understand them here in the way that to the forms of logic the thought of their application is added in judgments. StrawsonVsKant: his subdivision of the categories puts quite a bit on the same level, which certainly cannot be regarded as equivalent as e.g. affirmative, negative, infinite. --- V 73 StrawsonVsKant: he thinks it is due to the (failed) metaphysical deduction (see above) entitled to identify "pure" concepts. --- V 75 StrawsonVsKant: why should the objects of consciousness not be understood as realities that are distinguished from the experiences of consciousness existence, even if sequence and arrangement coincide point by point with the experiences of consciousness? --- V 83 StrawsonVsKant: unity of the different experiences requires experience of objects. Can his thesis withstand the challenge? Why should not objects (accusatives) form such a sequence that no differentiation between their order and the corresponding experiences has to be made? E.g. Such items may be sensory data: red, round spots, tickling, smells, lightning, rectangles. --- V 84 Why should the terms not simply be such sensory quality concepts? StrawsonVsKant: it is very easy to imagine that experience exactly has this sort of unrelated impressions as its content. Impressions that neither require nor permit, to become "united in the concept of an object". StrawsonVsKant: the problem with the objects of experience is that their ESSE is at the same time entirely their percipi how their percipi nothing but their ESSE. That is, there is no real reason for distinguishing between the two. --- V 106 Room/persistence/Kant: The space alone is persistent. Any time determination presupposes something persistent. StrawsonVsKant: unclear. For the concept of self-consciousness the internal temporal relations of the sequence are completely insufficient. We need at least the idea of a system of temporal relations, which includes more than these experiences themselves. But there is no access for the subject itself to this broader system than by its own experiences. --- V 107 StrawsonVsKant: there is no independent argument that the objective order must be a spatial order. --- V 116 Causality/StrawsonVsKant: its concept is too rough. Kant is under the impression that he is dealing with a single application of a single concept of "necessity", but he shifts in his application, the meaning of this concept. The required sequence of perceptions is a conceptual, but the necessary sequence of changes is a causal one. --- V 118 Analogies/StrawsonVsKant: fundamental problem: the conditions of the possibility of objective determination of time. Possible objects/Kant: Problem: whether there should be a "at the same time" or "not at the same time" of possible and actually perceived objects. If there is no "at the same time", there can be no distinction made between possible and real objects. --- V 124 Pure space/Kant: is itself not an object of empirical perception. StrawsonVsKant: element of deceptive logic: Kant seems to think that certain formal properties of the uniform spatiotemporal frame must have direct correlates in the objects themselves. --- V 128 StrawsonVsKant: its entire treatment of objectivity is under considerable restriction, he relies nowhere on the factor onto which, for example, Wittgenstein strongly insists: the social nature of our concepts. --- V 157 StrawsonVsKant: but assuming that the physical space is euclidic, the world could be finite in an otherwise infinite empty space. And that would be no meaningless question. --- V 163 Antinomies/StrawsonVsKant: from the fact that it seems to be the case that there are things which are ordered in time or space in a certain way, it does not follow that it either seems that all things appear as members of a limited series, neither that it seems that all things exist as members of an infinite series. In fact, neither of the two members of the disjunction is true. --- V 164 Antinomies/StrawsonVsKant: certainly the notion of a sequential order is justified, but it does not follow that the concept for the "whole series" of things must apply. --- V 178 Antinomies/StrawsonVsKant: he was mistaken that the antinomies are the field, on which the decisive battles are fought. --- V 184 Existence/Kant: "necessity of existence can only be recognized from the connection with what is perceived according to general laws of experience." StrawsonVsKant: this is a deviation from the critical resolution of antinomies and has to do with the interests of "pure practical reason": that is, with morality and the possibility of free action. --- V 194 StrawsonVsKant: we can draw the conclusion from the assertion that when a being of endless reality exists, it does not exists contingently, not reverse in that way that if something exists contingently, it is a character of endless reality. --- V 222 Transcendental idealism/Kant: claims, he is an empirical realism. Confidence must include an awareness of certain states of consciousness independent of objects. StrawsonVsKant: this is certainly a dualistic realism. This dualism questions the "our". --- V 249 StrawsonVsKant: to say that a physical object has the appearance, a kind of appearance of a physical character, means, trying to brighten an unclear term by another dubious, namely the one of the visual image. |
Strawson I Peter F. Strawson Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. London 1959 German Edition: Einzelding und logisches Subjekt Stuttgart 1972 Strawson II Peter F. Strawson "Truth", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. Vol XXIV, 1950 - dt. P. F. Strawson, "Wahrheit", In Wahrheitstheorien, Gunnar Skirbekk Frankfurt/M. 1977 Strawson III Peter F. Strawson "On Understanding the Structure of One’s Language" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell Oxford 1976 Strawson IV Peter F. Strawson Analysis and Metaphysics. An Introduction to Philosophy, Oxford 1992 German Edition: Analyse und Metaphysik München 1994 Strawson V P.F. Strawson The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. London 1966 German Edition: Die Grenzen des Sinns Frankfurt 1981 Strawson VI Peter F Strawson Grammar and Philosophy in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol 70, 1969/70 pp. 1-20 In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Strawson VII Peter F Strawson "On Referring", in: Mind 59 (1950) In Eigennamen, Ursula Wolf Frankfurt/M. 1993 Rorty VI Richard Rorty Truth and Progress, Cambridge/MA 1998 German Edition: Wahrheit und Fortschritt Frankfurt 2000 |
| Kripke, S. A. | Searle Vs Kripke, S. A. | Wolf II 30 Names/Understanding/Searle: to understanding belongs the knowledge of one or more descriptions. Extreme case: simply identify the object. Intentional relationship. SearleVsKripke: ignores the intentionality. Searle: Use of names is "mental reference" in a network of other intentional states and against a background of practice and pre-intentional assumptions. Searle II 292 SearleVsKripke: the representation of the baptism is completely descriptive. It gives us either an intentional content in spoken form (description) or provides us ostensively with the intentional content of a perception. II 293 By the way Kripke's theory does not use any causal link between the referring use of names and the named objects. The causal chains are not pure, every speaker must also have a intentionalistic member and intend to talk about the object. SearleVsKripke: Baptism should probably not be a cause, otherwise we would declare a successful reference to a chain of successful references. That would be circular. II 294 Names/Donnellan:(similar to Kripke) postulates a "historically correct explanation", and secondly, "who that is, from whom" the speaker wants to predicate something. This requires an omniscient observer. E.g. "Socrates had a snub nose". According to Donnellan owes this obviously no fact at all, which is about us, except for the causal chain. But for what keeps the omniscient observer looking for? Searle: surely for intentional causation and content. There are always counterexamples of names that do not work this way at all. II 295 Names/Rorty: Causal theory only needs "ordinary physical causation". Names/Gareth Evans: E.g. Madagascar originally referred to a part of continental Africa. The causal chain is thus a dissenting. Why does the name then today refer to the island? II 296 Names/description/SearleVsKripke: E.g. Concise Biographical Dictionary ". Ramses VIII is a Pharaoh of a series of pharaohs in ancient times, about whom nothing is known." In reality, the example shows that a lot of him is known. Yes, he is almost from an ideal case for the most naive version of the description theory. II 346 A perfect identifying description. It is parasitic to other speakers, but it is sufficient. SearleVsCausal theory/VsKripke: it exaggerates the analogy between reference and perception. perception: is nailed to each point of the world. By causal self-referentiality of the intentional content. II 297 But with names that kind of causation does not exist (also of intentional causation). The conditions for successful use of a name can be met, even without causal connection. II 298 E.g. tribe with the taboo of talking about the dead, and baptism of newborn babies, in which all must participate. Meets descriptive theory. II 346 The teaching of names defines an intentional content, but no definition. II 300 E.g. meteorologists can predict storms. They also assign names. But the future events cannot cause the name uses. Searle IV 179 KripkeVsDonnellan: (similar to Searle): Distinction speaker reference/semantic terms: if the speaker is wrong, the semantic relation can go to something other than that of which he speaks. IV 179/180 Searle: However, that is not quite correct: E.g. "King" / usurper: the speaker does not even need to have the opinion that the object fulfils the description. Kripke: in a given idiolect the semantic relation is determined (without indexical shares) through a general intention of the speaker. The speaker reference is determined by a specific intention. SearleVsKripke: this is precisely where the approach is stuck: in the sense, as I have general and specific intentions, I have no general intentions towards descriptions. If I needed it, I would have an infinite number of them. E.g.(without index): "The man who eating a ham sandwich on the Empire State Building on 17/06/53 at 10 am." According to Kripke in my idiolect this is determined by my general intention. IV 181 Searle: I know what the term means, because I know what the case would be if it would be correct to apply it. SearleVsKripke: More than that, no general intentions are necessary. There are an infinite number of cases in which I have no general intent. Stalnaker I 173 SearleVsKripke: (Searle 1969 (1)) it is wrong to assume that there could be a class of logically proper names, that means names that consist solely to have a certain reference for an object. It is fundamentally wrong to assume that there are signs that have only denotation without connotation I 174 SearleVsKripke/Stalnaker: (Searle 1969(2)) (like Frege): describes an axiom of identification: "a generalization of Frege's dictum that every referring expression must have a sense". I 175 And it was also an attempt to say what the skills of the speaker are. Mill/Kripke/Stalnaker: do not seem to answer that. Competence/skills/FregeVsMill/Stalnaker: Mill does not explain the speaker's skill to pick his object. Stalnaker: but that can only be reviewed seriously, if the two issues are separated (see above). 1. J. Searle, Speech Acts, Cambridge 1969, p. 93 2. Ibid. p. 80 |
Searle I John R. Searle The Rediscovery of the Mind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1992 German Edition: Die Wiederentdeckung des Geistes Frankfurt 1996 Searle IX John R. Searle "Animal Minds", in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1994) pp. 206-219 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 K II siehe Wol I U. Wolf (Hg) Eigennamen Frankfurt 1993 Stalnaker I R. Stalnaker Ways a World may be Oxford New York 2003 |
| Mentalesese | Peacocke Vs Mentalesese | I 212 PeacockeVsMentalese: E.g. Suppose a creature whose brain is composed of layers of spatially organized "maps": here you do not need Mentalese, either. Disjunction/Belief/Peacocke: could be realized as something that can be explained with the theory of circuits. Then there could be a third state, that would be equivalent to the acceptance of both alternatives. [Fa or Gb]. (>circuit algebra). There might be reasons to believe the whole disjunction without reasons for one side alone! Our model also allows to explain why a person does not always draw the disjunctive consequences of their beliefs! It is possible that a component of S Fa is not always present. "Not always present" means that the component can be implemented quite differently. It could be a concentration of substance in an set of neurons or a question of the distribution in them. Deduction/Mentalese/Peacocke: because of the single requirement that it must take care of analog syntactic structures of the lines, the thesis of Mentalese is obvious. I 213 Vs: but it is not true that it is indispensable. A physical unit could register that the state S Fa v Gb is a disjunction, because it is suitably connected to two belief states. One side could be negated. (e.g., S ~Gb), then the unit could cause the system to go into the state S Fa. In this case, no information about the contents of either of the two sides is required! There is only the modus tollendo ponens. PeacockeVsMentalese: therefore, we can ask in any situation where the language of the brain seems indispensable at first glance: can supposed syntactic operations be replaced by relational operations? If so, we do not need the thesis of Mentalese. Mentalese/Peacocke: as far as I know none of the proponents asserts that except for an assumed Mentalese sentence S that is supposed to be stored if a subject believes that p, also another Mentalese sentence S' is to stored, which means: "I believe that p." ((s) recourse). It is generally believed that it is sufficient for belief that a stored sentence is based on perception, other states and behavior appropriately. Peacocke: but that is exactly my replacement tactics. (Relations instead of syntax). I 213/214 Replacement Tactics/Peacocke: can also be used to show how actions can easily be explained by states with content. Mentalese would have to adopt an additional translation module. Peacocke: an intention that Gb may partly have its propositional content by the fact that the corresponding action is determined by the fact that the subject is in the unstructured state S Gb which has its contents by its relations to other states. This also applies to the practical inferring: ((s) "content from relations rather than language.") The relational model seems to conceive Mentalese as a special case among itself. I 215 Computation/PeacockeVsMentalese: if we can be in mental states with content (by relations), without having to store sentences, then there can also be computation without internal brain language. Because Def Computation/Peacocke: (calculation) is a question of states with content that emerge systematically from each other. This requires certain patterns of order and causal relations, but no syntactic structure. PeacockeVsFodor: it does not necessarily apply: "No representation, no computation". |
Peacocke I Chr. R. Peacocke Sense and Content Oxford 1983 Peacocke II Christopher Peacocke "Truth Definitions and Actual Languges" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell Oxford 1976 |
| Nagel, Th. | Verschiedene Vs Nagel, Th. | Tetens IV 153 Nagel: Experience content can never be identical with anything physical. Tetens IV 59 Nagel seems to conclude: if x and y are identical, then the one who perceives x must also perceive y. I.e. if an observer perceives the physical world, he would also have to perceive the experience content of another person if these were identical. But he does not perceive it, so it cannot be identical. Identity/(s)VsNagel: for example, water and H20 are identical, but one actually only perceives water. The perceptions do not have to be identical. TetensVsNagel: there is also the knowledge: if someone knows that he perceives x, this does not mean that he knows that he perceives y! Experience/perception/Nagel: "...and finally we feel the taste of chocolate..." IV 60 Experience/Perception/TetensVsNagel: why does he not simply say: "by all this taking place in the organism, especially in the brain, the person concerned eats and tastes chocolate"? Then he would not have succumbed so easily to the temptation to ask the following question: Nagel: "But what is the taste of chocolate?" Tetens: he would have done well to just say the following: "he puts it in his mouth and perceives it in a specific way, because you can identify chocolate by chewing it". Taste is not something additional to the process of tasting. (s) Activity instead of object - taste instead of taste ("reification"). Tetens: that would also save us from the even more fatal question: "Where is the taste? TetensVsNagel: he puzzles the question and e.g. acts like a blind man who wanted to question the colours: because he cannot touch or smell them, why do they then occur in the world? They are simply physical characteristics of physical things in the world. NagelVsTetens: we do not have two languages without a reason! Tetens IV 72, 73 + TetensVsNagel: correct, but the two do not differ in that the one - the "language of sensation" - is closer to "reality" than the other. Tetens IV 75 Tetens: Solution: is there still a mystery when the naturalist says: "when a certain wavelength is reflected, one experiences something to which one has learned to react in our culture with color words". |
Tetens I H. Tetens Geist, Gehirn, Maschine Stuttgart 1994 W VII H. Tetens Tractatus - Ein Kommentar Stuttgart 2009 |
| Peacocke, Chr. | Verschiedene Vs Peacocke, Chr. | I 15 "Depth"/Peacocke: dangerous ambiguity: it is true that whenever the additional property which differs monocular from binocular vision is present, that there is an impression of depth, but depth is a sensual property! I 16 I.e. the difference between monocular and binocular vision is not purely representative! (Peacocke pro: in addition to representative, there must be sensory content). Depth/perception/concept/O'ShaughnessyVsPeacocke: Depth is never a sensory property: Concepts play a causal role in the creation of depth: 1. Any depth perception depends on viewing one's visual depth perception as a contribution to the color of physical objects at any distance from one. 2. Monocular vision: two visual fields of sensations could be indistinguishable and yet, thanks to different concepts and different beliefs of their owners, produce different veridical visual "depth impressions". But: binocular vision: here the three-dimensional visual field properties cannot be compared with different depth sensations, at least not with regard to the three-dimensional distribution of the actually seen surface. PeacockeVsO'Shaughnessy: this is confirmed by the optical facts, but he only takes into account the bundles of rays falling into a single eye! In fact, monocular vision is insufficient for depth perception. Binocular vision not only explains depth perception, but also why it decreases at great distances. |
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| Principia Mathematica | Gödel Vs Principia Mathematica | Russell I XIV Circular Error Principle/VsPrincipia Mathematica(1)/PM/Russell/Gödel: thus seems to apply only to constructivist assumptions: when a term is understood as a symbol, together with a rule to translate sentences containing the symbol into sentences not containing it. Classes/concepts/Gödel: can also be understood as real objects, namely as "multiplicities of things" and concepts as properties or relations of things that exist independently of our definitions and constructions! This is just as legitimate as the assumption of physical bodies. They are also necessary for mathematics, as they are for physics. Concept/Terminology/Gödel: I will use "concept" from now on exclusively in this objective sense. A formal difference between these two conceptions of concepts would be: that of two different definitions of the form α(x) = φ(x) it can be assumed that they define two different concepts α in the constructivist sense. (Nominalistic: since two such definitions give different translations for propositions containing α.) For concepts (terms) this is by no means the case, because the same thing can be described in different ways. For example, "Two is the term under which all pairs fall and nothing else. There is certainly more than one term in the constructivist sense that satisfies this condition, but there could be a common "form" or "nature" of all pairs. All/Carnap: the proposal to understand "all" as a necessity would not help if "provability" were introduced in a constructivist manner (..+...). Def Intensionality Axiom/Russell/Gödel: different terms belong to different definitions. This axiom holds for terms in the circular error principle: constructivist sense. Concepts/Russell/Gödel: (unequal terms!) should exist objectively. (So not constructed). (Realistic point of view). When only talking about concepts, the question gets a completely different meaning: then there seems to be no objection to talking about all of them, nor to describing some of them with reference to all of them. Properties/GödelVsRussell: one could surely speak of the totality of all properties (or all of a certain type) without this leading to an "absurdity"! ((s) > Example "All properties of a great commander". Gödel: this simply makes it impossible to construe their meaning (i.e. as an assertion about sense perception or any other non-conceptual entities), which is not an objection to someone taking the realistic point of view. Part/whole/Mereology/GödelVsRussell: neither is it contradictory that a part should be identical (not just the same) with the whole, as can be seen in the case of structures in the abstract sense. Example: the structure of the series of integers contains itself as a special part. I XVI/XVII Even within the realm of constructivist logic there are certain approximations to this self-reflectivity (self-reflexivity/today: self-similarity) of impredicative qualities, namely e.g. propositions, which as parts of their meaning do not contain themselves, but their own formal provability. There are also sentences that refer to a totality of sentences to which they themselves belong: Example: "Each sentence of a (given) language contains at least one relational word". This makes it necessary to look for other solutions to the paradoxes, according to which the fallacy does not consist in the assumption of certain self-reflectivities of the basic terms, but in other assumptions about them! The solution may have been found for the time being in simple type theory. Of course, all this refers only to concepts. Classes: one should think that they are also not created by their definitions, but only described! Then the circular error principle does not apply again. Zermelo splits classes into "levels", so that only sets of lower levels can be elements of sets of higher levels. Reducibility Axiom/Russell/Gödel: (later dropped) is now taken by the class axiom (Zermelo's "axiom of choice"): that for each level, for any propositional function φ(x) the set of those x of this level exists for which φ(x) is true. This seems to be implied by the concept of classes as multiplicities. I XVIII Extensionality/Classes: Russell: two reasons against the extensional view of classes: 1. the existence of the zero class, which cannot be well a collection, 2. the single classes, which should be identical with their only elements. GödelVsRussell: this could only prove that the zero classes and the single classes (as distinguished from their only element) are fictions to simplify the calculation, and do not prove that all classes are fictions! Russell: tries to get by as far as possible without assuming the objective existence of classes. According to this, classes are only a facon de parler. Gödel: but also "idealistic" propositions that contain universals could lead to the same paradoxes. Russell: creates rules of translation according to which sentences containing class names or the term "class" are translated into sentences not containing them. Class Name/Russell: eliminate by translation rules. Classes/Principia Mathematica/Russell/Gödel: the Principia Mathematica can do without classes, but only if you assume the existence of a concept whenever you want to construct a class. First, some of them, the basic predicates and relations like "red", "colder" must be apparently considered real objects. The higher terms then appear as something constructed (i.e. something that does not belong to the "inventory of the world"). I XIX Ramsey: said that one can form propositions of infinite length and considers the difference finite/infinite as not so decisive. Gödel: Like physics, logic and mathematics are based on real content and cannot be "explained away". Existence/Ontology/Gödel: it does not behave as if the universe of things is divided into orders and one is forbidden to speak of all orders, but on the contrary: it is possible to speak of all existing things. But classes and concepts are not among them. But when they are introduced as a facon de parler, it turns out that the extension of symbolism opens the possibility of introducing them in a more comprehensive way, and so on, to infinity. To maintain this scheme, however, one must presuppose arithmetics (or something equivalent), which only proves that not even this limited logic can be built on nothing. I XX Constructivist posture/constructivism/Russell/Gödel: was abandoned in the first edition, since the reducibility axiom for higher types makes it necessary that basic predicates of arbitrarily high type exist. From constructivism remains only 1. Classes as facon de parler 2. The definition of ~, v, etc. as valid for propositions containing quantifiers, 3. The stepwise construction of functions of orders higher than 1 (of course superfluous because of the R-Axiom) 4. the interpretation of definitions as mere typographical abbreviations (all incomplete symbols, not those that name an object described by the definition!). Reducibility Axiom/GödelVsRussell: this last point is an illusion, because of the reducibility axiom there are always real objects in the form of basic predicates or combinations of such according to each defined symbol. Constructivist posture/constructivism/Principia Mathematica/Gödel: is taken again in the second edition and the reducibility axiom is dropped. It is determined that all basic predicates belong to the lowest type. Variables/Russell/Gödel: their purpose is to enable the assertions of more complicated truth functions of atomistic propositions. (i.e. that the higher types are only a facon de parler.). The basis of the theory should therefore consist of truth functions of atomistic propositions. This is not a problem if the number of individuals and basic predicates is finite. Ramsey: Problem of the inability to form infinite propositions is a "mere secondary matter". I XXI Finite/infinite/Gödel: with this circumvention of the problem by disregarding the difference between finite and infinite a simpler and at the same time more far-reaching interpretation of set theory exists: Then Russell's Apercu that propositions about classes can be interpreted as propositions about their elements becomes literally true, provided n is the number of (finite) individuals in the world and provided we neglect the zero class. (..) + I XXI Theory of integers: the second edition claims that it can be achieved. Problem: that in the definition "those cardinals belonging to each class that contains 0 and contains x + 1 if it contains x" the phrase "each class" must refer to a given order. I XXII Thus whole numbers of different orders are obtained, and complete induction can be applied to whole numbers of order n only for properties of n! (...) The question of the theory of integers based on ramified type theory is still unsolved. I XXIII Theory of Order/Gödel: is more fruitful if it is considered from a mathematical point of view, not a philosophical one, i.e. independent of the question of whether impredicative definitions are permissible. (...) impredicative totalities are assumed by a function of order α and ω . Set/Class/Principia Mathematica(1)/Russell/Type Theory/Gödel: the existence of a well-ordered set of the order type ω is sufficient for the theory of real numbers. Def Continuum Hypothesis/Gödel: (generalized): no cardinal number exists between the power of any arbitrary set and the power of the set of its subsets. Type Theory/VsType Theory/GödelVsRussell: mixed types (individuals together with predications about individuals etc.) obviously do not contradict the circular error principle at all! I XXIV Russell based his theory on quite different reasons, similar to those Frege had already adopted for the theory of simpler types for functions. Propositional functions/statement function/Russell/Gödel: always have something ambiguous because of the variables. (Frege: something unsaturated). Propositional function/p.f./Russell/Gödel: is so to speak a fragment of a proposition. It is only possible to combine them if they "fit together" i.e. are of a suitable type. GödelVsRussell: Concepts (terms) as real objects: then the theory of simple types is not plausible, because what one would expect (like "transitivity" or the number two) to be a concept would then seem to be something that stands behind all its different "realizations" on the different levels and therefore does not exist according to type theory. I XXV Paradoxes in the intensional form/Gödel: here type theory brings a new idea: namely to blame the paradoxes not on the axiom that every propositional function defines a concept or a class, but on the assumption that every concept results in a meaningful proposition if it is claimed for any object as an argument. The objection that any concept can be extended to all arguments by defining another one that gives a false proposition whenever the original one was meaningless can easily be invalidated by pointing out that the concept "meaningfully applicable" does not always have to be meaningfully applicable itself. 1. Whitehead, A.N. and Russel, B. (1910). Principia Mathematica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. |
Göd II Kurt Gödel Collected Works: Volume II: Publications 1938-1974 Oxford 1990 |
| Putnam, H. | Nagel Vs Putnam, H. | I 25 NagelVsPutnam: has always been flirting with subjectivism. I 132 Internal realism fails because of its own test of rational acceptability. What we actually accept is a worldview that confirms or refutes our perceptions. Even our interpretation of the quantum theory and the related observations would be a view on the suchness of the world, even if a physicist says it could not be interpreted realistically. It would not be a view that would rightly be restricted by means of an "internalist" interpretation. Our point of view is a set of beliefs that affect the real suchness, while it is being admitted that we do not know many things. The only method of determining the rational acceptability is thinking about whether it is true. With all the evidence and arguments, and considering all the things that are cited by others as relevant. Nagel: we must not equate acceptability with truth, otherwise we would rob both terms of any content. Internal Realism/Putnam: internal realism should not contain any reduction of truth to epistemic terms, truth and acceptability are interdependent. NagelVsPutnam: that is not clear. Putnam seems to be making concessions lately, however, see his explanation for why Wittgenstein was not a relativist: a position outside the language game is something else than participating in the language game itself. Putnam: but why should metalanguage be so sure of itself?" I 133 Brand: the belief that the world is organized is quite confirmed in a number of areas, namely: if they predict observations that, in turn, cannot be explained by our belief in these hypotheses. The "theory ladenness" of the observation in my opinion is of little importance. |
NagE I E. Nagel The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation Cambridge, MA 1979 Nagel I Th. Nagel The Last Word, New York/Oxford 1997 German Edition: Das letzte Wort Stuttgart 1999 Nagel II Thomas Nagel What Does It All Mean? Oxford 1987 German Edition: Was bedeutet das alles? Stuttgart 1990 Nagel III Thomas Nagel The Limits of Objectivity. The Tanner Lecture on Human Values, in: The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 1980 Vol. I (ed) St. M. McMurrin, Salt Lake City 1980 German Edition: Die Grenzen der Objektivität Stuttgart 1991 NagelEr I Ernest Nagel Teleology Revisited and Other Essays in the Philosophy and History of Science New York 1982 |
| Putnam, H. | Searle Vs Putnam, H. | Searle passim Core thesis: (VsPutnam): meanings are in the head! Because perception is self-respect and delivers the performance conditions itself. Propositions, characters are also only objects in the world. But their power representation is not intrinsical! It is derived from the intentionality of the mind. I 34 SearleVsFunctionalism/SearleVsPutnam: the actual mental phenomena, however, have nothing to do with attributes but are subjective first-person phenomena. II 91 Twin Earth/Putnam: the world takes command. II 92 SearleVsPutnam: that is not enough. Tradition: two mistakes: 1. assumption, any intentional content is an isolated unit. 2. assumption, causation is always a non-intentional relation. Intentionality/causality/Searle: there is a relevance of causality. 1. Network and background affect fulfilling conditions. 2. intentional causation is always in an internal relation to the fulfilling conditions. 3. a person stands in indexical relation with their own intentional states, network, and background. (Each with its own background). II 93 Causality: occurs as part of the intentional content. Previously Bill must have identified Sally as Sally, so it belongs to the fulfillment of conditions, it must be caused by Sally and not by Twin-Sally. His current experience has to make reference to this earlier identification. Indexicality: the experience is not merely an experience that someone has. It is the experience of someone with the specific network and the special background. (...) Twin Earth (TE) Example's interchange of the two Sallys in childhood. How may it be that both express the same proposition and have identical qualitative experiences and yet mean something different? II 97 TE/Searle: Experiences are in fact "qualitatively identical" but have different content and different fulfillment conditions. Recognition: one has the ability to recognize somebody here on earth but this ability itself does not need to include representation yet to exist in them! The difference between the two twins is that their experiences refer to their own background skills. (Indexicality). II 250 SearleVsPutnam: all the arguments have in common that according to them the inner intentional content of the speaker is not sufficient to determine what he refers to. II 251 SearleVsPutnam : the thesis that the meaning determines the reference can hardly be falsified by the consideration of cases where speakers do not even know the meaning! Intension and extension are not defined relative to idiolects! To mean/tradition: Intension is an abstract entity, which can be more or less detected by individual speakers. But it is not enough to show that the speaker does not like or have recorded only incompletely the intension, because such a speaker also had no relevant extension! SearleVsPutnam: this one would have to suggest that the totality of intentional states of speakers (including experts) does not determine the correct extension. Searle: it is for the experts to decide. Elms/beeches/Searle: I know that beeches are no elms. How do I know that? Because I know that there are different species of tree. I have thus formulated conceptual knowledge. II 257 SearleVsPutnam: a murderer is not defined by the microstructure. II 257/258 SearleVsPutnam: Another point: Putnam makes certain assumptions: never anyone came up with the idea to extend the traditional thesis that intension determines the extension to these indexical words. Example "I have a headache" (Twin Earth). But the extension of "I" is another. It has in two different idiolects two different extensions. Searle: But it does not follow that the concept, I have of myself, is in any way different from the concept that my doppelganger has of himself. SearleVsPutnam: Putnam assumes that the tradition cannot be applied to indexical expressions. 2. that fulfillment conditions must also be identical with the doppelganger. Searle: both is wrong. Searle: if we understand intentional content under "intension" it just yet determines the extension. In addition, two persons may be in type identical mental states and yet their intentional contents may be different. They can have different truth conditions. II 259 Searle: suppose Jones christens 1750 water indexically on Earth and Twin Jones on Twin Earth. Type identical intellectual content and visual experiences Putnam: because they now give the same definition, Putnam assumes that we cannot explain with drawing on their mental content that they are two different extensions. Searle: simple answer: they do not have type identical intentional contents. Because these contents are self-referential. The fulfillment conditions are set. Different things are meant in both cases. (> to mean; >meaning/intending). III 173 SearleVsPutnam: confuses two logically independent theses under his label "metaphysical realism": 1. reality exists independently of our representations. 2. there is exactly one correct conceptual schema for the description of reality (privileged scheme: PS). Searle: Putnam sees quite truely that the external realism refutes the privileged scheme. The metaphysical realism is the conjunction of these two. SearleVsPutnam: but you do not refute both by refuting one of the conjunction members. The falsity of the privileged scheme lets the external realism untouched. |
Searle I John R. Searle The Rediscovery of the Mind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1992 German Edition: Die Wiederentdeckung des Geistes Frankfurt 1996 Searle IX John R. Searle "Animal Minds", in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1994) pp. 206-219 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Qualia | Dennett Vs Qualia | Block I 200 Dennett: contents of consciousness consist only of judgments. Qualia are probably no judgments (opinions). Then they are spurious theoretical entities that we propose to explain the desire to predict anything about what is going on in our minds. BlockVsDennett: he has the same relation to qualia, which has the American Air Force to Vietnamese villages: he destroys them, to save them. PauenV 142 Qualia/DennettVsExplanatory Gap: nothing but complexes of dispositions. If you say: "This is my Quale", then you single out this complex whether you want to or not. It only seems as if you were referring to a private incomprehensible something before the eyes of the mind, but it only seems to be that way. Explanatory GapVsDennett: According to the representatives of this argument it is possible that differences exist on the phenomenal level, which do not correspond to any functional differences. E.g. Argument of inverted spectra, argument of mising qualia (see below). Inverted Spectra/Pauen: Argument: it is possible that two people have conflicting color perceptions, but have no differences on the physical level. Neither behavior nor neuronal level show the difference. V143 If we accept that, then phenomenal states could not be grasped in behavioral dispositions, not even in functional descriptions. Problem: this triggers the undesired consequences of epiphenomenalism if mental differences may not be noticeable at the neural level. Inverted Spectra/DennettVsInverted Spectra/Pauen: behavior and phenomenal experience cannot be separated, because they are intertwined on the neural level. Therfore awareness and behavior are inseparable. |
Dennett I D. Dennett Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, New York 1995 German Edition: Darwins gefährliches Erbe Hamburg 1997 Dennett II D. Dennett Kinds of Minds, New York 1996 German Edition: Spielarten des Geistes Gütersloh 1999 Dennett III Daniel Dennett "COG: Steps towards consciousness in robots" In Bewusstein, Thomas Metzinger Paderborn/München/Wien/Zürich 1996 Dennett IV Daniel Dennett "Animal Consciousness. What Matters and Why?", in: D. C. Dennett, Brainchildren. Essays on Designing Minds, Cambridge/MA 1998, pp. 337-350 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 Block I N. Block Consciousness, Function, and Representation: Collected Papers, Volume 1 (Bradford Books) Cambridge 2007 Block II Ned Block "On a confusion about a function of consciousness" In Bewusstein, Thomas Metzinger Paderborn/München/Wien/Zürich 1996 |
| Qualia | Verschiedene Vs Qualia | Tetens IV 50 Perception/Tetens: we distinguish modality: smelling, tasting, hearing, seeing - and content (often referred to as "quale", "qualia"). Just as well we can talk about "experience content", or simply "experience". Tetens IV 72 Qualia/Color/Nail/Tetens: the antinaturalist would say color is the color seen, the color impression, that can never be identical with electromagnetic radiation. Qualia/Color/TetensVsNagel: so I admit I perceive the colors. But when it comes to perception, nobody can ignore my description of my perception. Now I could have learned from the beginning to react to "the object there reflects electromagnetic radiation of this and that wavelength". (s)VsTetens: does not work a) because of Sorites, b) (Danto2): same color impression at different combinations of wavelengths. TetensVsVs: I would have to have learned additionally to divide the wavelengths more exactly under certain test conditions than with the naked eye. (s)VsTetens: that does not help in everyday life, does it? Tetens: then I would never have had the idea to distinguish between objective physical events and subjective experiences. Tetens IV 71 Qualia/Experience Content/Tetens: in order not to be a spoilsport, we do not have to say "I see something red" but "I have a red sensation". ((s) Reification). |
Tetens I H. Tetens Geist, Gehirn, Maschine Stuttgart 1994 W VII H. Tetens Tractatus - Ein Kommentar Stuttgart 2009 |
| Russell, B. | Peacocke Vs Russell, B. | I 131 Acquaintance/Russell: objects of acquaintance: E.g. sense data. They are obvious to the subject. Sense Data/Russell: correspond to the positions of singular terms in a sentence. They are at the same time real constituents of the sentence. And without givenness at that! (Without intension). Purely extensional occurrence of objects in the sentence. PeacockeVsRussell: 1) that may mollify FregeVsRussell's criticism of his concept of proposition. But it does not justify Russell: because he did not refer to obviousness for the thinker. 2) physical objects that, according to Russell, "cause the sense data" are therefore demonstrative and descriptive in a mix. PeacockeVs: our approach, on the other hand, assumes that demonstrative ways of givenness are not descriptive. But Russell's mixed approach is not entirely irrelevant: if we replace "sense data" by "experience": PeacockeVsRussell: he confused a plausible determination of the the constitutive role with "content". I 180 Acquaintance/Russell: (B. Russell, Problems of Philosophy, 1973, p. 32) "Each understandable sentence must be composed of constituents with which we are familiar." PeacockeVs: that got bad press. Problem: Excessive proximity to Humean empiricism. SainsburyVs: Russells ideas should be defended without the principle of acquaintance if possible. Peacocke: but if you free the principle of non-essential epistemological attachments, it is a correct and fundamental condition for the attribution of contents. Acquaintance/Russell: we are familiar with the sense data, some objects of immediate memory and with universals and complexes. Earlier: the thinker is also familiar with himself. Later: Vs. Complex/Russell: aRb. Acquaintance/PeacockeVsRussell: he had a correct basic notion of acquaintance, but a false one of its extension (from the things that fall under it). The salient feature is the idea of relation. One is dealing with the object itself and not its deputy. I 182 Def Principle of Acquaintance/PeacockeVsRussell: Thesis: Reconstruction, reformulated principle of acquaintance: The thinker is familiar with an object if there is a way of givenness (within its repertoire of concepts) that is ruled by the principle of sensitivity and he is in an appropriate current mental state, which he needs to think of the object under this way of givenness. For this, we need a three-digit relation between subject, object and type of the way of givenness The type of the way of givenness (as visual or aural perception) singles out the object. "Singling out" here is neutral in terms of whether the object is to be a "constituent of thoughts" or not. This preserves two features of Russell's concept: 1) acquaintance enables the subject to think about the object in a certain way because of the relationship that it has with it. 2) The concept of the mental state may preserve what Russell meant when he spoke of acquaintance as a relation of presentation. Constituent/Thoughts/Russell: he thought that objects occurred downright as parts of the thought. PeacockeVsRussell: we will interpret this as an object that indicates a type of a way of givenness (indexing). We do not allow an object to occur as part of a thought, just because it is the only component of the thought that corresponds to a singular term position in a sentence that expresses a thought. I 183 This is a Neo-Fregean theory, because an object can only exist as part of the thought by the particular way of its givenness (intension). (VsRussell: not literally part of the thought or sentence). I 195 Colors/Explanation/Peacocke: to avoid circularity, colors themselves are not included in the explanation of a response action, but only their physical bases. Different: E.g. 'John's favorite color': which objects have it, depends on what concepts φ are such that φ judges the subject, 'John's favorite color is φ' together with thoughts of the form 't is φ'. Analog: defined description: E.g. the 'richest man'. He is identified by the relational way of givenness in context with additional information: Complex/Acquaintance/Russell/Peacocke: E.g. a subject has an experience token with two properties: 1) It may have been mentioned in the context with sensitivity for a specific demonstrative way of givenness of an object (e.g. audible tone). 2) At the same time it may be an experience token of a certain type. Then, to be recognized the two must coincide in the context I 196 with a sensitivity for a specific concept φ in the repertoire of the subject. VsAcquaintance/VsRussell/Peacocke: one can argue: E.g. Cicero died long ago E.g. arthritis is painful. We can attribute such beliefs when the subject understands the meanings of the concepts. Nevertheless, the readiness to judge that Cicero died long ago depends on a mental state, with regard to which there must be an evidence. What kind of a mental state should that be? It need not remember the occasion when it first heard the name 'Cicero'. But neither: 'F died long ago', where 'F' is a defined description. Name/Peacocke: semantic function: simply singling out a particular object. Understanding: if you can identify the reference of the name in one way or another. There is no specific way in which you have to think of the Roman orator to understand the name. VsAcquaintance/VsPeacocke: that may even endanger the reformulated principle: if the name only singles out the object, then the subject must have a relation to a thought which contains the object as a constituent. PeacockeVs: I dispute the last conditional. We must distinguish sharply between a) beliefs, where the that-sentence contains a name, and b) the presence of the reference of a name as constituent of a Neo-Fregean thought. The latter corresponds to the relation 'Bel'. I 196/197 Def Relation 'Bel'/Terminology/Belief/Propositional Attitudes/Peacocke: a belief which contains the reference of a name as constituent of a Neo-Fregean thought: E.g. not only 'NN died a long time ago', but propositional attitude. ((s) not only belief about someone or something, but about a particular object.) Relation Bel/Belief/Peacocke: three reasons for distinguishing beliefs: a) we want to exclude that someone can acquire a new belief simply by introducing a new name. (Only a description could do that). E.g. if we wanted to call the inventor of the wheel 'Helle': Trivialization: 1) it would be trivial that such a stipulation should be enough for the reference in a community. 2) Nor is it a question of us being able to give outsiders a theoretical description of the community language. You cannot bring about a relation Bel by linguistic stipulation. I 198 b) Pierre Example/Kripke/Peacocke: this type of problem arises in cases where the language is too poor for a theory of beliefs in this sense: if someone understands a sentence, it is not clear what thoughts he expresses with it. (>Understanding/Peacocke). Because the semantics only singles out the object, not the way of thinking about the object (intension). This is different with pure index words and certain descriptions. E.g. a person who says 'I'm hot now' expresses the thought: ^[self x]^[now t]. But that involves nothing that would be 'thinking of something under a name'! Pierre Example/Kripke/Solution: a complete description of Pierre's situation is possible (for outsiders) without embedding 'London' in belief contexts. Peacocke: at the level of 'Bel' (where the speaker himself is part of the belief) beliefs can be formulated so that proper names are used: 'He believes that NN is so and so'. c) perception/Demonstratives/Way of Givenness/Peacocke: here, the way of givenness seems to have a wealth that does not need to be grasped completely, if someone uses demonstratives. The wealth of experience is covered by the relation Bel, however. But this way we are not making certain commitments: E.g. we do not need to regarded 'Cicero died long ago' as metalinguistic, but rather as meant quite literally. I 201 Logical Operators/Quantification/Logic/Acquaintance/PeacockeVsRussell: our reconstructed principle of acquaintance implicitly includes the obligation to recognize entities that can only be preserved inferentially: E.g. uniqueness operators, other quantifiers, connections, also derived ones. This can even apply to logical constants and some truth functions and not only for ways of givenness of these functions. RussellVs: the principle of acquaintance is not applicable to logical constituents of thoughts. |
Peacocke I Chr. R. Peacocke Sense and Content Oxford 1983 Peacocke II Christopher Peacocke "Truth Definitions and Actual Languges" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell Oxford 1976 |
| Schlick, M. | Ayer Vs Schlick, M. | III 101 SchlickVsCoherence theory: beyond the consistency of a system, one can determine the correspondence with reality. Ayer: per Schlick. AyerVsSchlick: but we have no class of synthetic propositions which are indubitable. III 103 Def Truth criterion/Verification criterion/Ayer: the criterion by which we test the validity of our synthetic propositions is their conformity with reality (= sensation). I.e. the criterion is the agreement with our observations. Observation sentence/AyerVsSchlick: unfortunately is not content with that, but asserts that the sentences with which we describe our observation sentences, would be absolutely unquestionable. III 104 Observation sentence/AyerVsSchlick: the only sense in which a sentence can be absolutely sure is that its negation would be self-contradictory. And it is not self-contradictory E.g. saying "that’s not green" if someone says "this is green". Synthetic sentences are just not true because of their form alone. Observation sentence/Schlick: would say that he never asserted this. But that he only talked about the truth of such a proposition at the moment of perception. AyerVsSchlick: yet we must distinguish between false and such propositions that are true but trivial. What Schlick says, is nothing more than p implies p. But it is wrong to say that when I feel pain the sentence that I feel pain is objectively certain. Because that would be a different form: p implies that (p is objectively certain). And that is wrong if it is a synthetic proposition. III 105 Confirmation/Schlick/AyerVsSchlick: that Schlick felt uncomfortable with this himself is due to the vagueness of his concept. "Confirmations", of which he believed they were indubitable. Confirmation/Schlick: is nothing that could be identified with something that can be expressed. This suggests that he thinks of actual perceptions, as opposed to the sentences that describe them. AyerVsSchlick: Dilemma: a) if confirmations are not entences but perceptions themselves, it makes no sense to say that they are indubitable or not indubitable. Because perceptions are not the sort of thing that can be doubted. It simply occurs. b) if they are observation sentences, they cannot be indubitable (see above). |
Ayer I Alfred J. Ayer "Truth" in: The Concept of a Person and other Essays, London 1963 In Wahrheitstheorien, Gunnar Skirbekk Frankfurt/M. 1977 Ayer II Alfred Jules Ayer Language, Truth and Logic, London 1936 In Philosophie im 20. Jahrhundert, A. Hügli/P. Lübcke Ayer III Alfred Jules Ayer "The Criterion of Truth", Analysis 3 (1935), pp. 28-32 In Theories of Truth, Paul Horwich Aldershot 1994 |
| Shoemaker, S. | Stalnaker Vs Shoemaker, S. | I 19 Qualia/inverted spectra/Shoemaker/Stalnaker: tries to reconcile the recognition of inverted spectra with a functionalist and materialist theory of the mind. It is about the relation between consciousness and representation - between the intentional and the qualitative content of an experience. StalnakerVsShoemaker: I defend the old-fashioned view that comparisons of the qualitative characteristics of the experience between persons are meaningless (meaningless) ((s) >Wittgenstein, bug example). Qualia/Stalnaker: it is not about to eliminate them (to "quinete") but to accept them as plausible and understandable part of a purely relational structure. Thesis: the comparability is possible because our concept of qualitative character is linked conceptually to the representational content. I 235 Shoemaker's paradox/Stalnaker: is the whole story coherent? Could α and β so be "combined differently"? Solution/Stalnaker: the contradiction could be avoided in two ways: one could a) to reject the identity statement 5 b) the identity statements 1-4. Ad a): leads away from functionalism to a purely physicalist approach for qualia, subjective distinguishability is then no longer a criterion. Phenomenal experiences can systematically look the same, while they are not. This view would make a decision necessary, on which general level you wish to define physical types. And it is not clear on what basis one should decide this. I 236 Problem: for that one would have to probably identify qualia with very fine-grained distinct physical properties. These may differ in details which are not perceptible to us. E.g. the physiological development of the brain during aging in a person would lead to other perceptions that would however subjectively remain the same perceptions of the person! ((s) distinction without difference). Ad b): (to reject identity statements 1-4): that is Shoemaker's position. Shoemaker: thesis: the addition of the backup system influences the qualitative character because it changes the memory mechanisms that are constitutive for the identity conditions for qualia. Then e.g. (see above) Alice's and Bertha's qualitative experiences differ. Stalnaker: does this correspond to the common sense view? StalnakerVsShoemaker: problem: subsequent changes in perception but also in the memory system of a person, but also counterfactual unrealized possibilities would change the qualitative character of the experiences of a person. E.g. assume that Bertha has a flexible brain, when a part is damaged another part takes over the work. Alice: her brain is less flexible, in case of damage to the qualitative character of her perceptions change. StalnakerVsShoemaker: problem: even if the central realizations are the same and even if the damages never occur, it would seem that Shoemaker's response implies that the qualia would be different because of the different connections with potential alternative implementations of the experiences. These differences may be purely intrapersonal: suppose Alice previously had an equally flexible brain like Bertha, but with age it lost its flexibility: Shoemaker seems to imply that the qualitative character of Alice's experiences of colors changes with changes in the potentiality of her brain, even if it is inaccessible to the introspection. |
Stalnaker I R. Stalnaker Ways a World may be Oxford New York 2003 |
| Skepticism | Frege Vs Skepticism | Davidson II 124 FregeVsSkepticism: the skeptic has no cure, because he cannot even assume for his next statement that his words still have the same meanings as before. Dummett I 58 Skepticism: never sure whether sense corresponds to a relation -Frege: just a severe deficiency of our language, which must be eliminated. IV 45 FregeVsSkepticism: The stimulus of the optic nerve is not given to us directly, but just an assumption! - If everything is imagination, there is no carrier. But if there is no carrier, there are also no imagination! - Frege: I am not my imagination, I am the carrier of my imagination. So what I’m saying something about is not necessarily my imagination. IV 50 Imagination/Psychology/Skepticism/Frege: not everything is imagination, otherwise psychology would contain all the sciences. (s) VsFrege: That does not make it impossible for everything to be imagination at the end of the day. (reductio ad absurdum is not enough.)) - IV 51 Perception/Frege: sensory perception necessarily requires sensation, and this is part of the inner world. Frege IV 46 FregeVsSkepticism: interestingly, in his consideration the opposites turn into each other. (>"Dialectic"). E.g. a sensory physiologist as a naturalist is initially far from considering the things he is convinced to see and touch as his imagination. IV 46 Stimulus/Frege: skepticism can easily refer to him: The stimulus of the optic nerve is not given to us directly, but just an assumption! We are experiencing only one end of the process that protrudes into our consciousness! Perhaps other causes are at work? So everything dissolves into imagination, also the light beams. The empirical sensory physiologist thus undermines his own conditions. Everything requires a carrier, I have considered myself as the carrier of my imagination, but am I not myself an imagination?. IV 47 Where is then the carrier of these imaginations? If everything is imagination: there is no carrier. Also, no imaginations are somehow distinguished. Now I experience the change into the opposite: FregeVsBerkeley: if everything is imagination, there is no carrier. But if there is no carrier, there are also no imaginations! ((s) that introduces a new concept, which does not exist in Berkeley: that of the carrier). But there can be no experience without someone who experiences it. But then there is something that is not my imagination, and yet object of my contemplation. Could it be that this "I" as a carrier of my consciousness is only one part of this consciousness, while another part is perhaps a "moon image"? I.e. something else is taking place when I judge that I am looking at the moon? Then this first part would have a consciousness and a part of this consciousness would be I, etc. so regress. Frege: I am not my imagination, I am the carrier of my imagination. So that what I’m saying something about is not necessarily my imagination. VsFrege: It could be argued E.g. that if I think that I don’t feel any pain at this moment, doesn’t something in my imagination correspond to the word "I"? Frege: That may be. IV 48 I/Frege: the word "I" may be connected to a certain image in my consciousness. But then it is an image among other images, and I am its carrier as I am the carrier of other images. I have an image of me, but I’m not this image! There must be a sharp distinction between the content of my consciousness (my imagination) and the object of my thinking (objective thoughts). Now the path towards recognizing other people as an independent carriers of imagination is clear. Images may also be the common object of thought by people who do not have this image. Imagination may become object. |
F I G. Frege Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik Stuttgart 1987 F II G. Frege Funktion, Begriff, Bedeutung Göttingen 1994 F IV G. Frege Logische Untersuchungen Göttingen 1993 Davidson I D. Davidson Der Mythos des Subjektiven Stuttgart 1993 Davidson V Donald Davidson "Rational Animals", in: D. Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford 2001, pp. 95-105 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 Dummett I M. Dummett The Origins of the Analytical Philosophy, London 1988 German Edition: Ursprünge der analytischen Philosophie Frankfurt 1992 Dummett III (e) Michael Dummett "Can Analytical Philosophy be Systematic, and Ought it to be?" in: Hegel-Studien, Beiheft 17 (1977) S. 305-326 In Wahrheit, Michael Dummett Stuttgart 1982 |
| Tetens, H. | Nagel Vs Tetens, H. | Tetens IV 69 Zombie Problem/Tetens: let us concede for perceptions, for the sake of argument, that they could be strictly separated from their description and the behavior. Naturalism/TetensVsNagel: especially then the anti-naturalist should be consistent and say nothing more about the perception beyond all behavior. Antinaturalism/NagelVsTetens: but the anti-naturalist is not silent by far and declares colors and sounds the content of our experience. In addition, the experienced colors and sounds cannot be anything physical in any way. |
NagE I E. Nagel The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation Cambridge, MA 1979 NagelEr I Ernest Nagel Teleology Revisited and Other Essays in the Philosophy and History of Science New York 1982 Tetens I H. Tetens Geist, Gehirn, Maschine Stuttgart 1994 W VII H. Tetens Tractatus - Ein Kommentar Stuttgart 2009 |
| Theory Ladenness | Wright Vs Theory Ladenness | I 204 Fashionable Thought/Realism/Theory/Science/WrightVs: every observation is "theory laden". perception/Theory: 1. Observation equals perception, and perception is to be distinguished from mere sensory perception, because it is conceptually coined. (McDowell pro). This now provides a good basis for the view that the conceptual equipment of the subjects is different. I 205 2. Every pre-philosophical utterance about the material world reaches beyond experience in an infinite number of ways. 3. The coverage of terms does not consist merely in classifying. They contain the possession of beliefs. (e.g. that things form a species at all). WrightVs: that is certainly all right. The purpose of the idea of theoreticity of observation should not, however, be to question the opposition between data and theory. I 206 Concept/Wright: a) Beliefs should not be assumed a priori for the concepts. This is not appropriate. Concepts are constantly in danger of being refuted by experience. b) The everyday content of experience is not an obstacle for pre-theoretical data. It can always happen that one agrees to an experience pattern against his background beliefs, even if this can be cancelled later again. Theoreticity of Contemplation/Theory/Wright: 4. The kind of theory ladenness needed to get the distinction data/theory into difficulties is rather the following(see above): It must be shown that the conditions for assertion (assertibility) are necessarily a function not only of the content of the report and the quality of the input experiences, but also a function of collateral empirical beliefs. I 207 WrightVsTheoreticity of Observation/VsTheory Ladenness/Wright: if all observation theory is laden, there are no statements to which any subject is obliged to agree. (So no "synthetic" statements in the sense of Two Dogmas, final section). Wright: the justified assertiveness is rather a four-digit relation between: Statement - Subject - Course of Experience - Background Assumptions. I 208 Theory/Observation: Example A and B disagree on the stature of a theory Ho based on the observation Oo. B evaluates the same observations under a theory H1. A agrees that if H1 is accepted, his experience does not give enough reasons to accept Oo. Then it is not about vagueness, it is about status. This status question continues now, if it is about H1 instead of Ho: B accepts H1 because of O1, but A represents a theory H2...(I 209+) about O1. I 209 The other agrees that, if the other theory applies, the reaction of the other is appropriate. Divergence on each point, but agreement on conditional acceptability. I 210 We determine that the respective observation reports are correct in terms of experience and background theory. If everyone works with incorrect data, the result is that they create their reports in the context of an incorrect background theory. If he works with materially incomplete data, he necessarily works with a true background theory, which he does not agree with! Problem: can it be certainly considered a priori that there are nevertheless cognitive deficits regarding the theoretical background obligations? (Can only mean that one accepts a wrong theory). Evidence: whether a theory is erroneous or flawless must now (see above) at least in principle be recognizable! Such a confirmation, however, could ultimately only be provided by independently credible data. (VsTheory-ladenness of observation). I 211 However, the example shows the possibility that this remains undecidable. Vs: the relationship between experience and observation reports can plausibly be described as that of a "positive presumption". I.e. it is not as if experience tends to confirm or refute a report only in the context of appropriate empirical background beliefs, there is rather a Def default relation of confirmation between experiences and statements. Example "That star is of yellowish color" is a default justification insofar as it concerns the color. An appropriate justification by experience can be overridden in the context of appropriate background beliefs, but is otherwise presumably valid. ((s) As long as nothing else "appears"). Question: can one now assume cognitive deficiency after all? A theorist who accepts O n 1 may either do so because of his ignorance of this support for Hn, or he may prejudice the validity of the evidence. If now there is no other support for Hn, the assumption of Hn by the first theorist remains unjustified, and the denial in law. I 212 VsVs: this does not take into account that the regress of theories can interlock backwards. Therefore, one cannot claim that both theorists are to blame either for defending unsupported theories or for being cognitively deficient. Problem: Evidence/Theory/Observation: if the truth is limited by evidence and all observation is theory laden, then differences of opinion cannot certainly be traced back to cognitive deficiencies. |
WrightCr I Crispin Wright Truth and Objectivity, Cambridge 1992 German Edition: Wahrheit und Objektivität Frankfurt 2001 WrightCr II Crispin Wright "Language-Mastery and Sorites Paradox" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell Oxford 1976 WrightGH I Georg Henrik von Wright Explanation and Understanding, New York 1971 German Edition: Erklären und Verstehen Hamburg 2008 |
| Tradition | Searle Vs Tradition | II 28 Belief/conviction/SearleVsTradition: it is simply not a kind of image! It is simply a representation, that means it has a propositional content, which determines the fulfillment of conditions and a psychological mode, which defines the orientation. II 49 SearleVsTradition: Convictions and desires are not the basic intentional states. One can also ashamed of his desire or his convictions. II 160 Tradition: one never has a causation experience. SearleVsTradition: one not only often has causation experience, but every perception or action experience is indeed just such causation experience! SearleVsHume: he looked at a wrong spot, he looked for strength. II 190 Example skiing: traditional view: first: word on world causation direction. You follow the instruction to put the weight on the downhill ski. II 191 This changes with increasing dexterity. The instructions appear unconscious, but still as a representation. To make conscious will become a hindrance in the future as with the centipede. SearleVsTradition: the rules are not internalized, but they are less important! They are not unconsciously "hardwired" but they become ingrained. II 192 They might be realized as nerves and simply make the rules unnecessary. The rules can retreat into the background. The beginner is inflexible, the advanced flexible. This makes the causal role of representation superfluous! The advanced does not follow the rules better, he skis differently! The body takes command and the driver's intentionality is concentrated on the winning of the race. II 192/193 Background/Searle: is not on the periphery of intentionality, but pervades the whole network of intentional states. II 228 Name/subject/direct speech/quote/tradition/Searle: E.g. the sheriff spoke the words "Mr. Howard is an honest man. " II 231 According to the traditional view, the direct speech here includes no words! (But names.) II 232 SearleVsTradition: Of course we can talk about words with words. Also here no new names are created, the syntactic position often allows not even the setting up of a name. II 233 E.g. Gerald said he would Henry. (Ungrammatical). II 246 de dicto/intensional/SearleVsTradition: E.g. "Reagan is such that Bush thinks he is the president." Searle: the mistake was to conclude from the intensionality of de dicto reports to the intensionality of the reported states themselves. But from the presence of two different types of reports simply does not follow that there are two different kinds of states. III 165 Realism/tradition/Searle: the old dispute between realism and idealism was about the existence of matter or of objects in space and time. The traditional realism dealt with the question of how the world really is. Realism/SearleVsTradition: this is a profound misunderstanding! Realism is not a thesis about how the world actually is. We could be totally in error about how the world is in its details, and the realism could be still true! Def realism/Searle: realism has the view that there is a way of being of things that is logically independent of all human representations. It does not say how things are, but only that there is a mode of being of things. (Things are here not only material objects). V 176 Predicate/meaning/Searle: but is the meaning of the predicate expression a linguistic or non-linguistic entity? Searle: it is a linguistic entity in an ordinary sense. Can the existence of a non-linguistic entity follow from the existence of a linguistic entity? Existence/language/universals/SearleVsTradition: but the claim that any non-linguistic entities exist, can never constitute a tautology. IV 155 Background/Searle: what means "use" of background assumptions? The meaning concept shall perform certain tasks for us. Now the same object can at different times be understood relatively to various coordinate system of background assumptions without being ambiguous. ((s) It is unambiguous in the respective situation). IV 156 SearleVsTradition: here it is also not about the distinction performance/competence. IV 157 There is no sharp distinction between the competence of a speaker and his knowledge of the world. |
Searle I John R. Searle The Rediscovery of the Mind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1992 German Edition: Die Wiederentdeckung des Geistes Frankfurt 1996 Searle IX John R. Searle "Animal Minds", in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1994) pp. 206-219 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Tradition | Peacocke Vs Tradition | I 4 Perception/Peacocke: Thesis: sensation concepts (sensory perception, sensations) are indispensable for the description of any perception. VsTradition: against the view that sensations are not to be found in the main stream if the subject is to concentrate on its own perception, I 5 or when sensations occur as a byproduct of perception. perception/Sensation/Tradition/Peacocke: historical distinction between perceptions (perceptual experience) that have a content, namely being propositionally (representational) about objects in the surroundings that appear in a certain way, and sensations: that have no such content, e.g. the sensation of smallness, which can be determined nonetheless. content/Peacocke: I only use it for the representational content of perceptions. Never for sensations. PeacockeVsTradition: it used to be reversed and "object" or "meaning" were used for representational content. I 10 Extreme Theory of Perception/Peacocke: the adequacy thesis is obliged. Because if the adequacy thesis is wrong, there are intrinsic properties of visual perception that are not covered by the representational content. Representatives: Hintikka. Hintikka: the right way to speak about our spontaneous perceptions is to use the same vocabulary and the same syntax that we apply to the objects of perception. We just need to determine the information! Information/Hintikka: unlike here: no informational content, but information given by the perception system. I 11 extreme theory of perception: main motivation. If the adequacy thesis is false, then there are intrinsic properties of an experience that can never be known by the person who makes the experience! PeacockeVs: this may be strengthened by the following argument that superficially seems correct: we can tell what experiences someone makes if we know which are his desires or intentions. Or if he is so and so predisposed. Or his behavior: E.g. if he suddenly swerves, he may have perceived an obstacle. Point: this can only ever discover representational content! I.e. never the intrinsic (perhaps sensory) portion of the experience. Peacocke: there must be a gap here. Three counter-examples are to show this. (see below). perception/Peacocke: is always more differentiated than the perception concepts! Qualia/Criterion/Goodman: identity conditions for qualia: >N. Goodman, The Structure of Appearance, 1951 p.290 Extreme Theory of perception/Peacocke: claims that the intrinsic properties of a visual experience are exhausted in determining the representational content along with a further-reaching determination of the properties mentioned there. PeacockeVsTheory of perception: Three counter-examples: 1) E.g. road straight to the horizon with two trees. We perceive the trees as different in size, but we know (or assume) that they are the same size and at different distances from us. Both versions are equally properties of the experience itself! For this we do not need concepts like perception field (visual field), which is more or less cut out by the tree. You simply have the experience. VsAdequacy Thesis: no true-making experience can represent one tree as larger and farther away or the other as a smaller and closer. Problem of additional characterization. Form of thought: added second or third. VsTheory of perception: the challenge for the perception theorist is that has to hold on to the adequacy thesis (all intrinsic characterization given by "appears to the subject that...") even if he has to admit these facts about the size of trees. I 13 2) Additional characterization: can vary even if the representational content remains constant: E.g. seeing with one eye closed or with both eyes open: the difference in perception is independent of the double images of binocular perception. I 14 Depth perception/Peacocke: a) It would be incompatible with our view to say that there is an additional way in which the depth is represented, with this additional feature being purely representational. b) The difference between monocular and binocular vision is both representational and sensory. (Peacocke pro). Vs a): here it would be unthinkable that there are cases where the alleged sensory property exists, but the representation of certain objects was not present behind others in the surroundings. pro b): according to this version that is conceivable. I 15 Peacocke: and it is also conceivable. E.g. TVSS: a system that "writes" information from a TV camera on the back of blind persons: idea of depth and spatial perception. Intrinsic! "Depth"/Peacocke: dangerous ambiguity: it is true that whenever the additional property is present that distinguishes monocular of binocular vision, then a sense of depth is present, but depth is a sensational property! I 16 I.e. the difference between monocular and binocular vision is precisely not purely representational! (Peacocke pro: in addition to representational there must be sensory content). Depth/perception/Concepts/O'ShaughnessyVsPeacocke: depth is never a sensational property: concepts play a causal role in the creation of depth: 1) every depth perception depends on you considering your visual sensation of depth as a contribution to the color of physical objects at any distance. 2) monocular vision: two visual fields of sensations might be indistinguishable, and yet, thanks to different concepts and different beliefs of their owners, evoke different veridical visual "depth impressions". But: binocular vision: here the three-dimensional visual field properties cannot be compared with different sensations of depth, at least not with regard to the three-dimensional distribution of the actually viewed surface. PeacockeVsO'Shaughnessy: that is indeed confirmed by the optical facts, but he only considers the beams that fall into a single eye! In fact, monocular vision is insufficient for depth perception. Binocular vision not only explains the sensation of depth, but also why this property decreases at large distances. PeacockeVsTheory of perception: 3) E.g. tipping aspect, wire cube, first seen with one eye, and then without any modification of the cube with reversed front and rear: Wittgenstein: "I see that it has not changed"! Peacocke: another example of non-representational similarities between experiences. The problem for the extreme perception theorist is to explain how these non-representational similarities came to pass without abandoning the adequacy thesis. He could simply introduce a new classification of visual experience, I 17 that refers to something before the event of experience, for example, the fact that the surroundings have not changed. PeacockeVs: but this is based on the character of successive experiences! Then we would still have to say on which properties of these experiences this "new property (classification)" is based. This does not work with memory loss or longer time spans between experienced: because this does not require the sensation that the scene has not changed. Nor does it explain the matching non-representational experiences of two different subjects who both see the other side of the cube as the front. Rabbit-Duck Head/Peacocke: why do I not use it as an example? Because there is nothing here that is first seen as a rabbit and then as a duck, but rather as a representation of a rabbit than as a representation of a duck, while nothing changes in the network of lines! So this example cannot explain that there may be non-representational similarities between experiences. Because someone who denies them can simply say that the component of the representational content that relates to the lines remains constant thus explaining the similarity. E.g. wire cube: here this explanation is not possible: because the network of lines looks quite different afterwards than it did before! I 17/18 Translation/Theory of PerceptionVsPeacocke: natural reaction: the statements which seem to be in conflict with the adequacy thesis could be translated into statements that add no properties incompatible with the adequacy thesis. E.g. "to cover the nearer tree, a larger area would have to be put between the tree and the viewer than for the more distant tree". PeacockeVsTheory of Perception/PeacockeVsAdequacy Thesis: it is not clear how this is supposed to work against the second type of example. But is it effective against the first one? What should the translation explain? 1) It could explain why we use the same spatial vocabulary for both three-dimensional objects and for the field of vision. That is also sufficient for "above" or "next to". But the adequacy thesis needs more than that! It needs an explanation for why something is bigger than something else in the field of vision. Therefore: 2) Problem: as approach which introduces meanings the approach of the adequacy thesis seems inadequate. E.g. disturbances in the visual field, curved beams ...+... counterfactual: problem: whether an object is bigger in the visual field of a subject is a property of its experience that in the real world counterfactual circumstances are what they want to be. One approach should therefore only take into account the properties of actual perception. I 19 Translation/Peacocke: a distinction between acceptable and unacceptable components can be made with Kripke's distinction between fixation of the reference and the meaning of an expression: Kripke: E.g. we could fix the reference of the name "Bright" by the fact that demanding that he should refer to the man who invented the wheel. ((s) Evans: E.g. Julius, the inventor of the zipper). Point: yet the statement is true: "it is possible that Bright never invented the wheel". Peacocke: analog: the experience of the type that the nearer tree in the field of vision is bigger is consistent with the fact that a larger area has to be covered to make it invisible. This condition fixes the type of experience. But it would be possible that the experience type does not satisfy the condition! Just like Bright would not have needed to be the inventor of the wheel. PeacockeVsTheory of perception: Translation: provides no access that leaves open the possibility that the experience type that actually meets the conditions of the translation, might as well fail. I 22 Sensational Content/PeacockeVsTheory of Perception: these points refer to the first counter-example against the adequacy thesis, but they also apply to the second one: for that purpose, we introduce the asterisked predicate behind*: it refers in terms of physical conditions that normally produce this sensational quality binocular seeing of objects at different depths. ad 3): non-representational similarity of experiences should consist in sameness or equality of sensational properties. Reversible Figures: in all standard cases, successive experiences have the same asterisked sensational properties: namely, those that can be expressed by the presented interposed coverage area. E.g. suppose someone wakes up in unfamiliar surroundings: initially he has a minimal representational content: he perceives all objects as surfaces with different angles. I 23 Suddenly everything shifts into place and he has a rich representational content. But in the scene nothing has changed in the sense in which something changed in the wire cube. |
Peacocke I Chr. R. Peacocke Sense and Content Oxford 1983 Peacocke II Christopher Peacocke "Truth Definitions and Actual Languges" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell Oxford 1976 |
| Tradition | Millikan Vs Tradition | I 13 classical realism: thought and knowledge are separated and intentionality is transparent. Intentionality/about/aboutness/MillikanVsTradition: intentionality is not transparent: many processes which are "about" something, are not done consciously. Ex von Frisch knew what a bee dance is, but bees do not know. Bees merely react adequately to bee dances. Thought: requires that the reference is identified. Inference: involves acts of identification of what the thoughts are. That's why they are representations. Ontology/Millikan: we are interested in what general structure the world has to have so that subject-predicate sentences, negation, etc. can be projected onto it. Realism/Millikan: properly understood realism does not require that the world must be "allocated correctly" for that. I 17 Eigenfunction/Millikan: Ex heart has something to do with the fact that it pumps blood. But what kind of connection to the blood pump must be given? Some hearts are malformed and can not pump, others, Ex water pumps could perfectly pump blood, but they are not hearts. Ex artificial hearts: do not belong to the biological category. So it's not the actual constitution, the actual forces, dispositions etc that make something an element of a biological category. Eigenfunction/Millikan: causes to submit something into a biological category. It has nothing to do with forces and dispositions, but with history. Having an intrinsic function means to be "slated for something", "to want" something ("supposed to", designed to "). We must now examine in a naturalistic, non-normative way. Language/propositional attitude/Millikan: So we have to ask, "what are they good for." Sentence/Millikan: Just as a heart sometimes may be deformed, a sentence can also not be well-formed. Other sentences are simply wrong. Tradition/falsehood/Millikan: the tradition was obliged to accept that false beliefs are beliefs. Then we also have to have the forces to influence our dispositions. MillikanVsTradition: but a broken kidney does not have the power to fulfill its function. I 18 And wrong and confused thoughts also do not have such forces. Tradition: here has more to do with input-output relations. Millikan: thesis: we are dealing with the biological functions, the functions that "something thought for". Millikan: thesis: by focusing on the intrinsic function (biological function), we are free to find the defining characteristics between true convictions and the world outside. Eigenfunction/Millikan: 1. direct eigenfunction: the first part of the theory relates only to the functions of things that are members of families that are similar to each other Ex hearts, or are similar to an archetype Ex sentences, words, Ex shaking hands. 2. derived eigenfunction: here we have to show that new things can have eigenfunction: Ex new behavior, new bee dances, new convictions. I 133 Intension/tradition/Millikan: always has to do with the application criteria. 1. set of properties or characters that are associated in the mind. 2. this criterion defines what the term is applied to - the extension! Extension/intension/tradition: the two are connected in spirit. Intension/MillikanVsTradition/Millikan: instead, it is the evolution that defines the connection between intention and extension. Sense/Millikan: results from the combination of term and reference, how the term "is intended to project". We still need the concept of testing. I 157 Rationalism/rationalist/tradition/Millikan: (similar argument): what a term means in one idiolect must be known to the speaker of this idioleckt a priori. But all that can be known a priori is whether two expressions in the idiolect have the same intension. If a term now has more than one intension, one can not know a priori whether the intensions will converge in the application. Therefore, each unambiguous term must have only one intension. meaning/sense/MillikanVsTradition: importance of Frege'ian sense, not intension. Then emptiness is the primary type of insignificance and neither ambiguity nor synonymy are determined by reasoning that is purely a priori. Intension/Millikan: is only the secondary meaning. I 158 They can be meaningful only insofar as these intentions are explicit and have meaning themselves. I 171 Error/delusion/to show/indexical word/Millikan: Ex there are two items on the table, an ashtray, which I do not consider an ashtray and a thing that is not an ashtray but I think it is and say "This is a nice Ashtray". Question: have I thereby said that the ashtray is nice, although I meant the other object? Ex I hold up a book and say, "This belonged to my grandfather." However, I am mistaken and am holding up the wrong book. I 172 What I have said, of course, is wrong. What is not so clear is whether what I meant is something other than what I said. Millikan: thesis: here it is not the case that I and my token of "this" have meant different things. Solution: "this" is ambiguous with respect to Frege's sense. MillikanVsTradition: philosophers have so often ignored that. Solution/Millikan: perception can lead us to temporary concepts. temporary concepts/intensions/Millikan: intensions are then linked to our ability to pursue things and to re-identify them. preliminary concept: Ex this coffee mug for me is totally indistinguishable from a dozen others, but at the moment it's my cup. I 173 Question: whether that even counts as a concept. Ability to track the object leads to an interior concept. This leads to the distinction between perception and thought. Thinking/Millikan: if thinking is not mediated by perception the objects one thinks of are not indexed. perception: here the objects are provided with an index. I 174 Error/delusion/indexical word/perception/misidentification/Millikan: Ex Suppose I'm wrong when I identify a recurring object. Then my inner concept has two senses, it has an ambiguous Fregean sense. 1. derived meaning from the ability to track the object. 2. inner concept I already had previously. "This" is therefore ambiguous. I 270 Standard conditions/content/Millikan: 1. in order to give them a content a "standard observer" must mean more than "observers to whom red things appear red under standard conditions". And accordingly for "standard conditions". Solution: standard conditions for red must be spelled out. Problem: no one has any idea how that could work. Problem: if you have every reason to believe that to be a standard observer, there are circumstances in which an object seems to have a different color than it has. But one would not conclude that the thing would not be red. Problem: if sameness of a thing is defined by its opposite properties, an observer must be able to identify these opposite characteristics, also. And it may be that these never come to light! Problem: how can my experience testify to the oppositeness of red and green? Many authors: think that one could never argue that red and green could even be in the same place at the same time. I 271 MillikanVsTradition: but that is not true, in fact there are many ways, Ex strabismus. Complementary colors/perception/seeing/certitude/Millikan: our trust in the fact that red and green are opposites (perhaps incorporated into nature) is an empirical certainty. And this is exactly the objective validity of these concepts, of the fact that red and green are properties - and not just hallucinations. |
Millikan I R. G. Millikan Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism Cambridge 1987 Millikan II Ruth Millikan "Varieties of Purposive Behavior", in: Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals, R. W. Mitchell, N. S. Thomspon and H. L. Miles (Eds.) Albany 1997, pp. 189-1967 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Various Authors | Frege Vs Various Authors | Brandom II 83 FregeVsBoole: no material contents, therefore unable to follow scientific concept formation. Boole: "scope equality". Frege I 32 Addition/Hankel: wants to define: "if a and b are arbitrary elements of the basic series, then the sum of a + b is understood to be that one member of the basic series for which the formula a + (b + e) = a + b + e is true." (e is supposed to be the positive unit here). Addition/Sum/FregeVsHankel: 1) thus, the sum is explained by itself. If you do not yet know what a + b is, you will not be able to understand a + (b + e). 2) if you’d like to object that not the sum, but the addition should be explained, then you could still argue that a + b would be a blank sign if there was no member of the basic series or several of them of the required type. Frege I 48 Numbers/FregeVsNewton: he wants to understand numbers as the ratio of each size to another of the same kind. Frege: it can be admitted that this appropriately describes the numbers in a broader sense including fractions and irrational numbers. But this requires the concepts of size and the size ratio!. I 49 It would also not be possible to understand numbers as quantities, because then the concept of quantity and the quantity ratios would be presumed. I 58 Number/Schlömilch: "Notion of the location of an object in a series". FregeVsSchlömilch: then always the same notion of a place in a series would have to appear when the same number occurs, and that is obviously wrong. This could be avoided if he liked to understand an objective idea as imagination, but then what difference would there be between the image and the place itself?. I 60 Frege: then arithmetic would be psychology. If two were an image, then it would initially only be mine. Then we could perhaps have many millions of twos. I 64 Unit/Baumann: Delimitation. FregeVsBaumann: E.g. if you say the earth has a moon, you do not want to declare it a delimited one, but you rather say it as opposed to what belongs to Venus or Jupiter. I 65 With respect to delimitation and indivisibility, the moons of Jupiter can compete with ours and are just as consistent as our moon in this sense. Unit/Number/Köpp: Unit should not only be undivided, but indivisible!. FregeVsKöpp: this is probably supposed to be a feature that is independent from arbitrariness. But then nothing would remain, which could be counted and thought as a unit! VsVs: then perhaps not indivisibility itself, but the be considering to be indivisible could be established as a feature. FregeVs: 1) Nothing is gained if you think the things different from what they are!. I 66 2) If you do not want to conclude anything from indivisibility, what use is it then? 3) Decomposabiltiy is actually needed quite often: E.g. in the problem: a day has 24 hours, how many hours have three days?. I 69 Unit/Diversity/Number/FregeVsJevons: the emphasis on diversity also only leads to difficulties. E.g. If all units were different, you could not simply add: 1 + 1 + 1 + 1..., but you would always have to write: 1" + 1"" + 1 """ + 1 """", etc. or even a + b + c + d... (although units are meant all the time). Then we have no one anymore!. I 78 ff: ++ Number neither description nor representation, abstraction not a definition - It must not be necessary to define equality for each case. Infinite/Cantor: only the finite numbers should be considered real. Just like negative numbers, fractions, irrational and complex numbers, they are not sense perceptible. FregeVsCantor: we do not need any sensory perceptions as proofs for our theorems. It suffices if they are logically consistent. I 117 - 127 ++ VsHankel: sign (2-3) is not empty, but determinate content! Signs are never a solution! - Zero Class/FregeVsSchröder: (> empty set) false definition of the zero class: there can be no class that is contained in all classes as an element, therefore it cannot be created by definition. (The term is contradictory). IV 14 VsSchröder: you cannot speak of "classes" without already having given a concept. - Zero must not be contained as an element in another class (Patzig, Introduction), but only "subordinate as a class". (+ IV 100/101). II 93 Euclid/FregeVsEuclid: makes use of implied conditions several times, which he states neither under his principles nor under the requirements of the special sentence. E.g. The 19th sentence of the first book of the elements (in each triangle the greater angle is located opposite the larger side) presupposes the following sentences: 1) If a distance is not greater than another, then it is equal to or smaller than the first one. 2) If an angle is equal to another, then it is not greater than the first one. 3) If an angle is less than another, it is not greater than the first one. Waismann II 12 FregeVsPostulates: why is it not also required that a straight line is drawn through three arbitrary points? Because this demand contains a contradiction. Well, then they should proof that those other demands do not contain any contradictions!. Russell: postulates offer the advantages of theft over honest work. Existence equals solvability of equations: the fact that √2 exists means that x² 2 = 0 is solvable. |
F I G. Frege Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik Stuttgart 1987 F IV G. Frege Logische Untersuchungen Göttingen 1993 Bra I R. Brandom Making it exlicit. Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment, Cambridge/MA 1994 German Edition: Expressive Vernunft Frankfurt 2000 Bra II R. Brandom Articulating reasons. An Introduction to Inferentialism, Cambridge/MA 2001 German Edition: Begründen und Begreifen Frankfurt 2001 Waismann I F. Waismann Einführung in das mathematische Denken Darmstadt 1996 Waismann II F. Waismann Logik, Sprache, Philosophie Stuttgart 1976 |
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| Truth nonconceptual | Versus | Goodman I, 18 ff Kant: the concept of a pure content is empty. Berkeley, Kant, Cassirer, Gombrich, all Vs: innocent eye, perception without concept, "pure givennes" substance as a substrate absolute immediacy. |
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The author or concept searched is found in the following theses of the more related field of specialization.
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| de dicto | Searle, J.R. | II 261 De dicto/belief/SearleVsall: all beliefs are de dicto - de re beliefs are a subclass - QuineVs: irrducible beliefs de re: between the believer and the objects - in addition to the de dicto-belief (much stronger thesis) Brains in a vat: only pure de dicto. SearleVsQuine: "when the world changed, beliefs change, even if everything in the head remains the same". II 262 General desire for a sailboat: "de dicto" for a special: "de re" II 263 SearleVsQuine: then in the general case allegedly context-free but: BurgeVsQuine: contextually bound belief cannot be completely characterized by their intentional content. (as not only relative between term and object) De dicto/Burge: Example: red cap in the fog: "there is a man who..." - Searle: that's enough to individuate every "de re" counterpart. "The same man may, at the conditions of fulfillment, belong to quite different perceptions." II 268 Thesis: "there are forms of intentionality that are not conceptual, but also not de re". |
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