10 ideas
| 7081 | Philosophy is not separate from or above empirical science [Neurath] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as philosophy as a basic or universal science alongside or above the various fields of the one empirical science. | |
| From: Otto Neurath (works [1930]), quoted by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: This is what you get for becoming an empiricist. If philosophy is the quest for human wisdom, it seems to me highly unlikely that physical sciences will provide it. Human interests and values and understanding play absolutely no role in physics. |
| 17896 | We need to know the meaning of 'and', prior to its role in reasoning [Prior,AN, by Belnap] |
| Full Idea: For Prior, so the moral goes, we must first have a notion of what 'and' means, independently of the role it plays as premise and as conclusion. | |
| From: report of Arthur N. Prior (The Runabout Inference Ticket [1960]) by Nuel D. Belnap - Tonk, Plonk and Plink p.132 | |
| A reaction: The meaning would be given by the truth tables (the truth-conditions), whereas the role would be given by the natural deduction introduction and elimination rules. This seems to be the basic debate about logical connectives. |
| 17898 | Prior's 'tonk' is inconsistent, since it allows the non-conservative inference A |- B [Belnap on Prior,AN] |
| Full Idea: Prior's definition of 'tonk' is inconsistent. It gives us an extension of our original characterisation of deducibility which is not conservative, since in the extension (but not the original) we have, for arbitrary A and B, A |- B. | |
| From: comment on Arthur N. Prior (The Runabout Inference Ticket [1960]) by Nuel D. Belnap - Tonk, Plonk and Plink p.135 | |
| A reaction: Belnap's idea is that connectives don't just rest on their rules, but also on the going concern of normal deduction. |
| 11021 | Prior rejected accounts of logical connectives by inference pattern, with 'tonk' his absurd example [Prior,AN, by Read] |
| Full Idea: Prior dislike the holism inherent in the claim that the meaning of a logical connective was determined by the inference patterns into which it validly fitted. ...His notorious example of 'tonk' (A → A-tonk-B → B) was a reductio of the view. | |
| From: report of Arthur N. Prior (The Runabout Inference Ticket [1960]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: [The view being attacked was attributed to Gentzen] |
| 13836 | Maybe introducing or defining logical connectives by rules of inference leads to absurdity [Prior,AN, by Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Prior intended 'tonk' (a connective which leads to absurdity) as a criticism of the very idea of introducing or defining logical connectives by rules of inference. | |
| From: report of Arthur N. Prior (The Runabout Inference Ticket [1960], §09) by Ian Hacking - What is Logic? |
| 15201 | That Queen Anne is dead is a 'general fact', not a fact about Queen Anne [Prior,AN] |
| Full Idea: The fact that Queen Anne has been dead for some years is not, in the strict sense of 'about', a fact about Queen Anne; it is not a fact about anyone or anything - it is a general fact. | |
| From: Arthur N. Prior (Changes in Events and Changes in Things [1968], p.13), quoted by Robin Le Poidevin - Past, Present and Future of Debate about Tense 1 b | |
| A reaction: He distinguishes 'general facts' (states of affairs, I think) from 'individual facts', involving some specific object. General facts seem to be what are expressed by negative existential truths, such as 'there is no Loch Ness Monster'. Useful. |
| 10486 | If we are rebuilding our ship at sea, we should jettison some cargo [Boolos on Neurath] |
| Full Idea: If we are sailors rebuilding our ship plank by plank on the open sea, then I know of some cargo we might want to jettison. | |
| From: comment on Otto Neurath (Protocol Sentences [1932]) by George Boolos - Must We Believe in Set Theory? p.128 | |
| A reaction: This may just be an assertion of Ockham's Razor, but the interest is that the Neurath image demands internal standards of economy etc, whereas reality itself seems to be a right mess. |
| 8485 | We must always rebuild our ship on the open sea; we can't reconstruct it properly in dry-dock [Neurath] |
| Full Idea: We are like sailors who must rebuild their ship out on the open sea, never able to dismantle it in a dry-dock and reconstruct it there out of the best materials. | |
| From: Otto Neurath (Protocol Sentences [1932]), quoted by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: This is the classic statement of the anti-foundationalist picture of knowledge. It is often quoted by Quine. A tricky issue. I have a lot of sympathy with Bonjour's rationalist foundationalism. |
| 3061 | Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing [Anaxarchus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing. | |
| From: report of Anaxarchus (fragments/reports [c.340 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.10.1 |
| 22899 | 'Thank goodness that's over' is not like 'thank goodness that happened on Friday' [Prior,AN] |
| Full Idea: One says 'thank goodness that is over', ..and it says something which it is impossible which any use of any tenseless copula with a date should convey. It certainly doesn't mean the same as 'thank goodness that occured on Friday June 15th 1954'. | |
| From: Arthur N. Prior (Changes in Events and Changes in Things [1968]), quoted by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 4 'Pervasive' | |
| A reaction: [Ref uncertain] This seems to be appealing to ordinary usage, in which tenses have huge significance. If we take time (with its past, present and future) as primitive, then tenses can have full weight. Did tenses mean anything at all to Einstein? |