Find counter arguments by entering NameVs… or …VsName.
The author or concept searched is found in the following 3 entries.
| Disputed term/author/ism | Author |
Entry |
Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Absoluteness | Unger | Stroud I 75 Absolute Terms/Skepticism/Peter Unger/Stroud: Def absolute terms/Unger: Example "flat", "empty": these are used legitimately (assertibility) in many situations even if they are not literally true. >Literal truth. This shows that there is no obstacle for our use and understanding of these terms. - Also "safe", for example. StroudVsUnger: pro: this relation between meaning and use can defend skepticism, but weaker than Descartes' dream argument. >Descartes, >Skepticism, >Meaning, >Use. StroudVsUnger: the assumption of absolute expressions is superfluous. |
Unger I P. Unger Empty Ideas: A Critique of Analytic Philosophy Stroud I B. Stroud The Significance of philosophical scepticism Oxford 1984 |
| Forms of Thinking | Dennett | I 275 Limits/Unger: There must always be a pair of x on both sides of the border; this is required by our conventions. InwagenVsUnger: so much the worse for the conventions! Jackendoff: Candidates on the border are forced into one or the other category. Dennett: a good trick, but not a forced move! Darwin shows us that nature does not need what we say we need to think; nature copes well with gradual variations. I 277 ((s) Limits are necessary for thinking, but not for nature.) General/Particular/Artificial Intelligence/Dennett: Donald Symons(1): there is no "general problem solver", because there are no general problems, only particular problems. >General Problem Solver. I 691 DennettVsSymons: There is also no general wound, but only particular wounds. Nevertheless, there is a general wound healing process. 1. Symons, D. 1992. "On the Use and Misuse od Darwinism in the Study of Human Behavior." In: Barkow, Cosmides, and Tooby, 1992, pp. 137-62. |
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 |
| Limits | Unger | Dennett I, 276 Limits/Unger: there must always be a pair of x on either side of the limit; this is required by our conventions. InwagenVsUnger: all the worse for the conventions! >Conventions. |
Unger I P. Unger Empty Ideas: A Critique of Analytic Philosophy |
| |||
| Disputed term/author/ism | Author Vs Author |
Entry |
Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unger, P. | Lewis Vs Unger, P. | IV 244 Sorites/Truth Value/Vagueness/Lewis: For example Fred is a borderline case of baldness, then the sentence "Fred is bald" is perhaps without truth values. Nothing in our language makes such descriptions (delineations) right and others wrong. We can't find a limit once and for all. If a sentence is true over the entire range, it is simply true. But we treat a sentence as more or less "simply true" even if it goes beyond an area of its vagueness that is large enough. So if it is "true enough". We can usually cope with this, but not always, as the paradoxes testify: Problem: truth-preserving arguments do not always have the quality of being "true enough"! "true enough": when is one sentence true enough? It's a matter of vagueness in itself. IV 245 More importantly, it depends on the context. In other circumstances, something may not be true enough. Austin: "France is hexagonal". Standards can be loosened or tightened. Interestingly, tightening is easier than loosening: For example, if the standards were high and something is said that is true enough only under relaxed standards, and nobody contradicts, then the standards are lowered. But what is said under lowered standards may still seem imperfectly acceptable. For example, tightening standards: always manages to appear recommendable, even if it disturbs the purposes of conversation. Absolute/relative: e.g. (Peter Unger): one could say that there is actually nothing that is really level! The sidewalk is level, but the desk is more level! And so there is surely also something that is more level than the desk. One can always think of something that is even more level, etc. Problem: "level" should actually be taken as an absolute term. Then how could one deny that the table is level VsUnger: one could deny that "level" is absolute. But Unger is right about that. What he calls inconsistent really sounds that way. So I assume that in no description of the relative vagueness of "level" and "more level" it is true that something is more level than something that is level. LewisVsUnger: the correct answer is that he is changing her account. (He is changing the score on you). He's transferring the account to you. What he says is only acceptable under tightened standards of precision. IV 246 Because what he says is only acceptable under tighter standards, it is no longer true that the sidewalk is level. But that does not change the fact that it was true in the original context. Unger has not shown that the new context is somehow more legitimate than the old one. "Safe"/Unger: in an analogous way, Unger (correctly) observed that "safe" is an absolute term. Therefore, nobody is actually safe in any matter! In fact, the approximation rule allows Unger to create a context in which everything he says is true, but that doesn't show that anything we do in more everyday contexts is wrong. |
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 |
| Unger, P. | Stroud Vs Unger, P. | Stroud I 75 Absolute Expressions/Scepticism/Peter Unger/Stroud: (Unger, (Oxford 1975, Journ. of Phil., 1977). Def Absolute Terms/Unger: e.g. "flat", "empty": these are used justifiably (assertiveness) in many situations, even if they are not literally true. This shows that there is no obstacle to our use and understanding of these expressions. N.B./Unger: this also applies to the absolute expression "certain". Because knowledge implies certainty. Thus our use of "certain" etc. would be compatible with the literal truth of skepticism. StroudVsUnger: pro: its relation between meaning and use can be used to defend skepticism. But Unger cannot support skepticism on the basis of "absolute expressions" alone. Descartes/Stroud: but this shows that what this is about is as strong as the dream argument in Descartes. But without the requirement that we do not dream, the absolute expressions "certain" and "I know" would not yield the sceptical conclusion. StroudVsUnger: we do not need his doctrine of "absolute expressions". |
Stroud I B. Stroud The Significance of philosophical scepticism Oxford 1984 |
| |||