FOM: Re: Tennant's reply to Detlefsen, McLarty, Tait

[Colin McLarty]

reply to Neil Tennant <neilt at mercutio.cohums.ohio-state.edu>

>This is a reply to Mic Detlefsen's welcome contribution to the
>discussion on Brouwer (Tue Sep  8 13:11 EDT 1998), and includes also
>some further response to Colin McLarty's most recent postings.

        I also want to thank Mic. I first began thinking seriously about
Brouwer after reading Mic's articles on him. 

        Niel wrote in reply to me:
 	
>We are now getting to the heart of the matter. Colin is in effect
>advancing the view that "knowledge (or:intuition) THAT p" somehow
>boils down or reduces to "intuitions OF various x's". 

        I did not advance the view. I said it was common, and that Brouwer
held a variant of it.

>But it is a famous point, first made by Frege and then hammered home
>by Geach (in his classic little study "Mental Acts") that singular
>relational propositions cannot be reduced to (a mere aggregate of)
>their referential constituents.

        The question is whether Brouwer was aware of this point and adapted
his thinking about intuitionism to it. I think not.

Colin McLarty