Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Douglas Lackey, Charles Chihara and Ian Hacking

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11 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 4. Pure Logic
The various logics are abstractions made from terms like 'if...then' in English [Hacking]
     Full Idea: I don't believe English is by nature classical or intuitionistic etc. These are abstractions made by logicians. Logicians attend to numerous different objects that might be served by 'If...then', like material conditional, strict or relevant implication.
     From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §15)
     A reaction: The idea that they are 'abstractions' is close to my heart. Abstractions from what? Surely 'if...then' has a standard character when employed in normal conversation?
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 5. First-Order Logic
First-order logic is the strongest complete compact theory with Löwenheim-Skolem [Hacking]
     Full Idea: First-order logic is the strongest complete compact theory with a Löwenheim-Skolem theorem.
     From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §13)
A limitation of first-order logic is that it cannot handle branching quantifiers [Hacking]
     Full Idea: Henkin proved that there is no first-order treatment of branching quantifiers, which do not seem to involve any idea that is fundamentally different from ordinary quantification.
     From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §13)
     A reaction: See Hacking for an example of branching quantifiers. Hacking is impressed by this as a real limitation of the first-order logic which he generally favours.
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 7. Second-Order Logic
Second-order completeness seems to need intensional entities and possible worlds [Hacking]
     Full Idea: Second-order logic has no chance of a completeness theorem unless one ventures into intensional entities and possible worlds.
     From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §13)
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 2. Logical Connectives / a. Logical connectives
With a pure notion of truth and consequence, the meanings of connectives are fixed syntactically [Hacking]
     Full Idea: My doctrine is that the peculiarity of the logical constants resides precisely in that given a certain pure notion of truth and consequence, all the desirable semantic properties of the constants are determined by their syntactic properties.
     From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §09)
     A reaction: He opposes this to Peacocke 1976, who claims that the logical connectives are essentially semantic in character, concerned with the preservation of truth.
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 4. Variables in Logic
Perhaps variables could be dispensed with, by arrows joining places in the scope of quantifiers [Hacking]
     Full Idea: For some purposes the variables of first-order logic can be regarded as prepositions and place-holders that could in principle be dispensed with, say by a system of arrows indicating what places fall in the scope of which quantifier.
     From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §11)
     A reaction: I tend to think of variables as either pronouns, or as definite descriptions, or as temporary names, but not as prepositions. Must address this new idea...
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 6. Relations in Logic
The mathematics of relations is entirely covered by ordered pairs [Chihara]
     Full Idea: Everything one needs to do with relations in mathematics can be done by taking a relation to be a set of ordered pairs. (Ordered triples etc. can be defined as order pairs, so that <x,y,z> is <x,<y,z>>).
     From: Charles Chihara (A Structural Account of Mathematics [2004], 07.2)
     A reaction: How do we distinguish 'I own my cat' from 'I love my cat'? Or 'I quite like my cat' from 'I adore my cat'? Nevertheless, this is an interesting starting point for a discussion of relations.
5. Theory of Logic / J. Model Theory in Logic / 3. Löwenheim-Skolem Theorems
If it is a logic, the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem holds for it [Hacking]
     Full Idea: A Löwenheim-Skolem theorem holds for anything which, on my delineation, is a logic.
     From: Ian Hacking (What is Logic? [1979], §13)
     A reaction: I take this to be an unusually conservative view. Shapiro is the chap who can give you an alternative view of these things, or Boolos.
5. Theory of Logic / K. Features of Logics / 2. Consistency
Sentences are consistent if they can all be true; for Frege it is that no contradiction can be deduced [Chihara]
     Full Idea: In first-order logic a set of sentences is 'consistent' iff there is an interpretation (or structure) in which the set of sentences is true. ..For Frege, though, a set of sentences is consistent if it is not possible to deduce a contradiction from it.
     From: Charles Chihara (A Structural Account of Mathematics [2004], 02.1)
     A reaction: The first approach seems positive, the second negative. Frege seems to have a higher standard, which is appealing, but the first one seems intuitively right. There is a possible world where this could work.
5. Theory of Logic / L. Paradox / 5. Paradoxes in Set Theory / b. Cantor's paradox
Sets always exceed terms, so all the sets must exceed all the sets [Lackey]
     Full Idea: Cantor proved that the number of sets in a collection of terms is larger than the number of terms. Hence Cantor's Paradox says the number of sets in the collection of all sets must be larger than the number of sets in the collection of all sets.
     From: Douglas Lackey (Intros to Russell's 'Essays in Analysis' [1973], p.127)
     A reaction: The sets must count as terms in the next iteration, but that is a normal application of the Power Set axiom.
5. Theory of Logic / L. Paradox / 5. Paradoxes in Set Theory / c. Burali-Forti's paradox
It seems that the ordinal number of all the ordinals must be bigger than itself [Lackey]
     Full Idea: The ordinal series is well-ordered and thus has an ordinal number, and a series of ordinals to a given ordinal exceeds that ordinal by 1. So the series of all ordinals has an ordinal number that exceeds its own ordinal number by 1.
     From: Douglas Lackey (Intros to Russell's 'Essays in Analysis' [1973], p.127)
     A reaction: Formulated by Burali-Forti in 1897.