display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
3 ideas
| 16882 | The building blocks contain the whole contents of a discipline [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The ultimate building blocks of a discipline contain, as it were in a nutshell, its whole contents. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (works [1890]), quoted by Tyler Burge - Frege on Knowing the Foundations 1 | |
| A reaction: [Burge gives a reference] I would describe this nutshell as the 'essence' of the subject, and it fits Aristotle's concept of an essence perfectly. Does it fit biology or sociology, in the way it might fit maths or logic? Think of DNA or cells in biology. |
| 8624 | Induction is merely psychological, with a principle that it can actually establish laws [Frege] |
| Full Idea: Induction depends on the general proposition that the inductive method can establish the truth of a law, or the probability for it. If we deny this, induction becomes nothing more than a psychological phenomenon. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884], §03 n) | |
| A reaction: The problem is that we can't seem to 'establish' the requisite proposition, even for probability, since probability is in part subjective. I think induction needs the premiss that nature has underlying uniformity, which we then tease out by observation. |
| 8626 | In science one observation can create high probability, while a thousand might prove nothing [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The procedure of the sciences, with its objective standards, will at times find a high probability established by a single confirmatory instance, while at others it will dismiss a thousand as almost worthless. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884], §10) | |
| A reaction: This thought is presumably what pushes theorists away from traditional induction and towards Bayes's Theorem (Idea 2798). The remark is a great difficulty for anyone trying to defend traditional induction. |