14 ideas
| 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. |
| 22352 | Out of more than a hundred planets, Earth is the only one with the idea of free will [Vonnegut] |
| Full Idea: I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by ‘free will'. I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will. | |
| From: Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five [1969], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Spoken by the ambassador from the planet Tralfamadore. Possibly the greatest put down of a philosophical idea since Diogenes responded to Plato's definition of a man. I think free will is a non-idea. It is non-sensical, and doesn't exist. |
| 8122 | True works of art transmit completely new feelings [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: Only that is a true work of art which transmits fresh feelings not previously experienced by man. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.9) | |
| A reaction: I think a great composer will probably not have any new feelings at all, but will discover new expressions which contain feelings by which even they are surprised (e.g. the Tristan chord). |
| 8121 | Art is when one man uses external signs to hand on his feelings to another man [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: Art is a human activity in which one man consciously by means of external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and other are infected by those feelings, and also experience them. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Such definitions always work better for some art forms than for others. This may fit 'Anna Karenin' quite well, but probably not Bach's 'Art of Fugue'. Writing obscenities on someone's front door would fit this definition. |
| 8124 | The highest feelings of mankind can only be transmitted by art [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: The highest feelings to which mankind has attained can only be transmitted from man to man by art. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.17) | |
| A reaction: We are much more nervous these days of talking about 'highest' feelings. Tolstoy obviously considers religion to be an ingredient of the highest feelings, but that prevents us from judging them purely as feelings. Music is the place to rank feelings. |
| 8123 | The purpose of art is to help mankind to evolve better, more socially beneficial feelings [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: The evolution of feeling proceeds by means of art - feelings less kind and less necessary for the well-being of mankind being replaced by others kinder and more needful for that end. That is the purpose of art. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.16) | |
| A reaction: Underneath his superficially expressivist view of art, Tolstoy is really an old-fashioned moralist about it, like Dr Johnson. This is the moralism of the great age of the nineteenth century novel (which was, er, the greatest age of the novel!). |
| 22710 | People estimate art according to their moral values [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: The estimation of the value of art …depends on men's perception of the meaning of life; depends on what they hold to be the good and evil of life. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898]), quoted by Iris Murdoch - The Sublime and the Good p.206 | |
| A reaction: [No ref given] This is put to the test by the insightful depiction of wickedness. We condemn the wickedness and admire the insight. Every reading of a novel is a moral journey, though I'm not sure how the true psychopath reads a novel. |
| 8125 | The upper classes put beauty first, and thus freed themselves from morality [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: The people of the upper class, more and more frequently encountering the contradictions between beauty and goodness, put the ideal of beauty first, thus freeing themselves from the demands of morality. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.17) | |
| A reaction: The rich are a great deal freer to pursue the demands of beauty than are the poor. They also have a tradition of 'immorality' (such as duels and adultery) which was in place long before they discovered art. |
| 8064 | We separate the concept of beauty from goodness, unlike the ancients [Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: The ancients had not that conception of beauty separated from goodness which forms the basis and aim of aesthetics in our time. | |
| From: Leo Tolstoy (What is Art? [1898], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This is written at around the time of the Aesthetic Movement, but Tolstoy's own novels are intensely moral. This separation makes abstract painting possible. |
| 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? |