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Paradox and Rationality
Apr. 30th, 2006 01:03 pmLast spring I was thinking something like: philosophical problems arise from our not being clear on how we mean certain words, from imagining a 'general' meaning of the word that's an amalgamation of more than one of its possible uses. I never fully explored this, short of saying McDowell was using 'meaning' that way in his essays on rule-following. That, on its own, does not sound like such a big deal, and counts on the conviction that using a word in an unclear way is obviously bad.
I am no longer comfortable with phrases like "this is how philosophical problems arise"; whatever kind of error using a word in an 'amalgamated' way commits, we should be able to single it out as an error apart from its being "how philosophical problems arise." What kind of problems could it cause? There might, one would think, be problems with the inferences one makes (or the things one goes on to say) about the term in question. We might even be led to say contradictory things about it. (e.g. The table is solid; the table is not solid.) ((But I can't tell whether the 'term in question' here is 'solid' or 'table'.)) These are the "paradoxes" Wisdom talks about. But don't our words have an amalgamation of different possible uses? Isn't it a fact about language--which we need not fight against--that there are vague terms in it? It is not necessarily an indictment of our reasoning that we're led to conclude contradictory things about something.
So what I'm after here is to find out whether or not rational disagreement, within one person, about the same state of affairs, is possible; or whether or not it's some kind of indictment of that person's reasoning that they should end up with a paradox at all.
( It doesn't get better )
I am no longer comfortable with phrases like "this is how philosophical problems arise"; whatever kind of error using a word in an 'amalgamated' way commits, we should be able to single it out as an error apart from its being "how philosophical problems arise." What kind of problems could it cause? There might, one would think, be problems with the inferences one makes (or the things one goes on to say) about the term in question. We might even be led to say contradictory things about it. (e.g. The table is solid; the table is not solid.) ((But I can't tell whether the 'term in question' here is 'solid' or 'table'.)) These are the "paradoxes" Wisdom talks about. But don't our words have an amalgamation of different possible uses? Isn't it a fact about language--which we need not fight against--that there are vague terms in it? It is not necessarily an indictment of our reasoning that we're led to conclude contradictory things about something.
So what I'm after here is to find out whether or not rational disagreement, within one person, about the same state of affairs, is possible; or whether or not it's some kind of indictment of that person's reasoning that they should end up with a paradox at all.
( It doesn't get better )
